title: The ethical dimensions of delivering culturally congruent nursing and health care.
abstract: This article discusses the ethical parameters of giving culturally congruent care to individual patients by health care professionals. Leininger's Cultural Care Diversity and Universality theory (Leininger, 1995) is used to demonstrate the importance of culture in a person's life and Husted's and Husted's (1995) bioethical theory is used to create a mind-set of ethical interaction and to direct the analysis of a bioethical dilemma involving cultural differences between persons of the same culture, a depressed Mexican-American woman and her husband. The differences between transculturalism and multiculturalism are explored. We defend the position that a patient's culture is only a useful tool in caring for a patient if the individual person is made the primary focus of care.
authors.affiliation: Duquesne University, School of Nursing, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15282, USA. zoucha@duq.edu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zoucha
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Husted
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003144:Communication Barriers; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003863:Depression / Q000208:ethnology / Q000451:nursing; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000523:psychology; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009742:Nursing Theory; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing / Q000592:standards*; D016746:Transcultural Nursing / Q000592:standards*