A Brief Biography of Madeleine Leininger

Madeleine Leininger

Madeleine Leininger was born in Sutton, Nebraska. She received a diploma in nursing from St. Anthony’s School of Nursing, Denver, Colorado in 1948. She gained her Bachelor’s degree in 1950 from St. Scholastica (Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas. In 1954, she earned her Master’s degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She was awarded with a Doctorate degree in cultural and social anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1965. Madeleine Leininger was the founder and a central leader of transcultural nursing who paid much attention on the systemic study of human caring within a transcultural theoretical and practice aspect (Sitzman & Eichelberger, 2010). Moreover, she initiated the Transcultural Nursing Society, a global organization whose objective was to advance the study and practice of transcultural nursing care. The thought of transcultural nursing, the theory of culture care, and care preservation as the core of nursing developed between the 1950s and 1960s was influenced by her early clinical work. Specifically, Madeleine worked as a clinical mental health specialist in a child guidance center which had mildly disturbed children of diverse cultural backgrounds. The central purpose of the theory of culture care diversity and universality was to unmask, document, interpret and elaborate the aspect of culture care as a synthesized construct (Fawcett, 2002). The main thesis of this theory is that different cultures have different perspectives on practice care, yet there are some commonalities about care among all world cultures (Fawcett, 2002).

In her theory, Madeleine asserts that culture is the broadest, most compreh...

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...se the practice of nursing continues to face obstacles or barriers related to cultural diversity including language barriers. Leininger’s theory calls for nurses to discover the differences and similarities in humanistic culture care. It is also possible to determine particular predominant culture care constructs from a holistic perspective. Therefore, it is critical to discover the ways of lives and care patterns of human beings or groups. This comparative information concerning culture care phenomena is unique since it is a way of knowing about persons and helping these individuals. The environmental perspective broadens the nurses’ ability to grasp aspects of living and care settings while practicing. The environmental concept in Leininger’s theory provides data regarding giving birth and dying rituals in one’s environmental setting (Leininger & McFarland, 2006).