Transcultural Communication in Health Care

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, well-organized and practice-oriented.
Review: This is a comprehensive, well-organized, practical guide in transcultural communication. The special features such as the self-assessment exercises, self-evaluation exercises, diary, and end-of-chapter questions are particularly motivating and instructive to the beginner transcultural communication practitioner. Although the book is practice-oriented, mentioning the contribution of Leininger to transcultural nursing theory would have been appropriate.

Another special feature that I liked is the discussion of culturally appropriate nursing diagnoses. It explains why the NANDA taxonomy may be culturally biased and provides recommendations for writing more culturally appropriate nursing diagnoses.

Another feature is the chapter on working with interpreters. It provides guidelines for working with and without interpreters.. I think a section on sign-language or deaf-interpreters would have been a nice addition. There are also on-line translation resources that are now available.

I also liked the annotated list of books and films. I would suggest adding books such as by nurse-anthropologist Jody Glittenberg, "To the mountain and back", of her experiences as a nurse and anthropologist in Guatemala.

I reviewed the 1999 paperback edition.