Transcultural nursing is both a specialty and a general practice area. It focuses on worldwide cultures and comparative cultural caring, health and nursing phenomena. Established more than 40 years ago, transcultural nursing aims to provide culturally congruent care.

Madeleine Leininger, founder and leader of the field, defines transcultural nursing as:

a substantive area of study and practice focused on comparative cultural care (caring) values, beliefs and practices of individuals or groups of similar or different cultures. Transcultural nursing’s goal is to provide culture specific and universal nursing care practices for the health and well-being of people or to help them face unfavorable human conditions, illness or death in culturally meaningful ways.

Leininger predicts that both master’s and doctorally prepared transcultural nurses will be in high demand in this century as transculturalism increases in healthcare services. Regardless of your experience in this field, you can expect to increase your knowledge and skills by taking our elearning courses. Created by leading providers, our courses provide highly interactive patient case studies that reflect an interdisciplinary approach (medical, legal, cross-cultural) to cross-cultural healthcare.

In particular, nurses will:

  • Improve the quality and safety of care provided to culturally and linguistically diverse patients
  • Treat diseases of foreign origin
  • Improve patient satisfaction and adherence
  • Improve patient trust, rapport and communication
  • Avoid unwanted litigation through proven risk management techniques
  • Increase market share in racial, ethnic and historically underserved markets
  • Minimize unnecessary tests and hospital readmissions due to language barriers
  • Receive accredited CME credits

Nurses and other providers receive expert, evidence-based clinical instruction that they can apply immediately. For example, after completing our “Language Access and the Law” course, 92 percent of providers said that the information contained in the course would help them to improve patient care.

Elearning courses for nurses and other providers include:

Language Access and the Law: Caring for the Limited English Proficient Patient
CME Credit
: 2.25 hours of AMA Category 1 credits

Understand the business, medical and legal reasons for providing language access services. Solve a comprehensive patient case study that includes medical, legal and cross-cultural patient care issues. Learn more.

Viewpoints: Clinical Competence in a Globally Mobile World
CME Credit: 6.0 hours of AMA Category 1 credits

Solve six fascinating patient case studies involving globally mobile patients by learning how to build cross-cultural trust and improve provider-patient communication. Learn how to distinguish conditions of foreign origin from commonly seen conditions with the same symptoms here in the U.S. Learn more.