Journal of Transcultural Nursing

Purpose: To identify which characteristics, wisdom, and skills are essential in becoming an effective Native American nurse leader. This will lead to the development of a curriculum suitable for Native American nurses. Design: A qualitative, descriptive design was used for this study. Focus groups were conducted in Polson, Montana. A total of 67 Native and non-Native nurses participated. Sixty-seven percent of them were members of Indian tribes. Data were content analyzed using Spradley’s ethnographic methodology. Findings: Three domains of analysis emerged: point of reference for the leader (individual, family, community), what a leader is (self-actualized, wise, experienced, political, bicultural, recognized, quiet presence, humble, spiritual, and visionary), and what a leader does (mentors, role models, communicates, listens, demonstrates values, mobilizes, and inspires). Discussion: Native nurse leaders lead differently. Thus, a leadership curriculum suitable for Native nurses may lead to increased work productivity and therefore improved patient care for Native Americans.

Research is deficient regarding the strengths of Pacific Island parents of children who are medically fragile. The purpose of this qualitative ethnographic study was to explore the strengths of Pacific Island parents of these children. Audiotaped interviews were analyzed using Text Smart and peer review. The core theme reflecting strength was positive energy. Participants believed that parents needed to have the ability to handle emotional feelings, solve problems, connect with their spirituality, find meaning, take care of themselves, use family support, use community support, use a positive attitude, be resourceful, meet a challenge, interact with nature, and focus on the present. Themes were affirmed by the literature with the exception of interacting with nature, which may be indigenous to the population’s cultural orientation.

Issues and purpose: Chronic illnesses, such as asthma experienced by children, are difficult for families and school professionals to manage. This study explored beliefs about asthma and asthma management among schoolchildren, parents, and teachers in an African American school. Design and methods: Focus groups were conducted with schoolchildren, parents, and teachers. Data were analyzed by content analysis; segments of information were categorized into groups that were later abstracted into themes illustrating beliefs and behaviors about asthma. Results: The children reported fear of not being able to breathe and the limitations of living with asthma. The teachers were concerned that they did not have a sufficient understanding of asthma to manage children’s asthma during the school day. Parents described complex lifestyles and the challenges of asthma management.

Many abused married Korean women have a strong desire to leave their abusive husbands but remain in the abusive situations because of the strong influence of their sociocultural context. The article discusses Korean women’s responses to spousal abuse in the context of patriarchal, cultural, and social exchange theory. Age, education, and income as component elements share common effects on the emergent variable, sociostructural power. Gender role attitudes, traditional family ideology, individualism/collectivism, marital satisfaction, and marital conflict predict psychological-relational power as a latent variable. Sociostructural, patriarchal, cultural, and social exchange theories are reconceptualized to generate the model of Korean women’s responses to abuse.

The study examined experiences of mothers and health care providers with preventive child health care services using qualitative methods at a primary care clinic located in transitional housing for homeless families in an urban community with predominantly Black American residents. Participants were 20 mothers and 4 health care professionals. Three major domains emerged: (a) the infrastructure of the clinic and health care delivery poses barriers to mothers’ access and use of services for their children; (b) specialized, biomedical-driven care produces fragmented care delivery not responsive to the comprehensive nature of problems of mothers and their children; and (c) organizational strategies for improving access and use of health care services are directed by health care providers’ value orientations. Findings support existence of infrastructural characteristics of the health care system that maintains differential value orientations and power structure, and care delivery processes that are non responsive to racially diverse and poor mothers.

This study describes the experiences of a group of nursing students from Sweden in a hospital in Tanzania. Students were interviewed on their return after the trip. Although students experienced considerable upheaval and frustration working in a different context, they learned valuable lessons as to how nursing can be conducted in conditions entirely different from those familiar to them. They attempted to understand the value and behavioral divergences they encountered, yet values of their home culture remained their frame of reference. This project reflected the importance of working through students’ experience if knowledge and understanding of self and others are to be enhanced or developed.

Providing culturally competent health care is a growing need as the population of culturally diverse women continues to rise. Compilation of a multilingual resource manual about maternal-child and women’s health topics that can be used by health educators to provide care to non-English-speaking and limited English proficiency (LEP) clients was achieved to address this need. In this article, significant details of this process are described allowing the reader to produce a similar version of the manual.

With the proliferation of electronic resources available to search for subjects related to transcultural nursing and health, nurses must keep abreast of computer-based tools that enable them to quickly and efficiently obtain information on a variety of topics. This article provides suggestions for narrowing and focusing a search on transcultural nursing and related subjects using important research databases such as Medline and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). Information about additional useful databases such as Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Psychological Abstracts (PsycINFO) is also provided. In the article, selected examples of Internet sites of interest in transcultural nursing and health are identified and described in brief annotations. Web sites for U.S. government agencies, organizations, and commercial groups that concern transcultural nursing and health care are cited. Global transcultural health and nursing Internet resources also are included.