Dedication and Acknowledgment

This fourth edition is dedicated to Dr. Madeleine Leininger and the many nursing students, clinicians, faculty, scholars, researchers, administrators, and leaders who have been and remain actively committed to make transcultural nursing knowledge and practices a reality in human caring. These students and colleagues have blazed new pathways in the use of research-based transcultural nursing knowledge along with major concepts, principles, and practices to develop culturally congruent ways to provide meaningful and beneficial culture care. The book is also dedicated to our families, who have been understanding and caring as we have spent many days and nights on this major publication. We thank them for their patience and support.

Very special thanks go to our outstanding contributors. These transcultural nurse experts have shared their knowledge and practices to make this book truly a definitive, major, and substantive publication. The contributors’ scholarship and expertise are clearly evident in their work, which has been drawn from their extensive in-depth experiences and use of theoretically based research knowledge to explicate the uses and practices of transcultural nursing. Their thoughtful work, genuine interest, and suggestions for the book have been much appreciated.

We are most grateful to Dr. Margaret Andrews for her willingness to write the foreword to this book. Her colleagueship, leadership, and friendship are deeply appreciated. We wish to acknowledge the McGraw-Hill staff for their unwavering dedication and support throughout the preparation and publication process. We also thank our colleague, Marilyn Eipperle, for her thoughtful and precise editing, incomparable organizational and communication skills, and her devotion to the integrity of the Culture Care Theory and the work of the late Dr. Madeleine Leininger. Marilyn, we could not have done this second book without you! Once again, we are truly grateful.

Finally, we thank the many cultural informants in Western and non-Western cultures. They have inspired the authors and editors to expand the discipline of transcultural nursing and the provision of culturally congruent quality care to diverse cultures worldwide.