Transcultural healthcare: a phenomenological study of an educational experience

This phenomenological study was undertaken for the purpose of describing the meaning of transcultural health care. A phenomenological approach was utilized to elicit the essence of meaning attached to the experience. Students in an upper midwestern university, enrolled in a transcultural health care course participated in the educational experience presented in this paper. While the course was multidisciplinary in nature, nursing represented the majority. The purpose was to identify and describe students' perception and definition of culture at the beginning and end of the course and to utilize an inductive process to formulate a descriptive structure depicting the meaning of transcultural health care. It was concluded that students' perception and definition of culture changed via the transformational process influenced by the passage of time and by the particular experiences students were exposed to.