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Abstract
The Transcultural Assessment Model of Giger and Davidhizars is a tool developed to assess cultural values of patients about health and disease behaviors and their effects. The model contains six cultural dimensions: Communication, Space, Social Organizations, Time, Environmental Control, and Biological Variations. On the basis of The Transcultural Assessment Model of Giger and Davidhizars, the following patient assessment is presented as a case study. The patient, who is hospitalized at child nephrology clinic at a university hospital, was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure discussed and this model was applied to the patient. This model provides us with the opportunity of understanding an individual's cultural heritage, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.
Keywords: Transcultural nursing, model, pediatric
Introduction
Health institutions are environments where cultural diversities are rich as both individuals receiving service and the health professionals providing this service possess different cultural properties.1 As cultural diversity is effective on every aspect of the life, it also affects the health care practices directly. Nurses can detect health care requirements and health care practices more easily since they establish face-to-face communications with patients/healthy individuals and their families.2 While working, nurses should be aware of the cultural properties of patients/healthy individuals, their families as well as their own institutions.3,4
Transcultural nursing is an essential aspect of healthcare today. Transcultural nursing was developed because of the need of providing care to people from widely differing cultures. Transcultural nursing is defined as a formal area of study and practice focused on comparative human care (caring) differences and similarities of the beliefs, values and patterned life ways of cultures to provide culturally congruent, meaningful and beneficial health care to people.3,5,6
This requires nurses to recognize and appreciate cultural differences in healthcare values, beliefs, and customs. Nurses must acquire the necessary knowledge and skills in cultural competency. Culturally competent nursing care helps ensure patient satisfaction and positive outcomes.3,4 Nurses can benefit from many guides and models while making a cultural assessment.
Transcultural nursing models provide a good guide for nurses in getting acquainted with the cultural structure of the society and in evaluating it. Beside to the studies of Leininger, other studies have been conducted and other models have been suggested in the field of transcultural care by such researchers Purnell, Paulanka,...