Background: The Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at the Florida Atlantic University is grounded in the Nursing as Caring theory. A transcultural caring immersion experience for nursing students is provided within the tribal community of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees.
Aims: The purpose of this study was to ascertain descriptions of nursing students' transcultural immersion experience.
Design: A qualitative descriptive approach was used via the Talking Circle method. The consensual qualitative research analytical approach was used to categorize participant responses.
Findings: Six themes emerged that are consistent with the Nursing as Caring theoretical key concepts: (1) persons are caring as diverse human beings, (2) persons care from a unique cultural perspective moment to moment, (3) persons are whole and complete in the moment when engaging with diverse others, (4) personhood is a process of living with meaningful purpose by diverse persons, (5) personhood evolves while caring for diverse others in nurturing relationships, and (6) connecting nursing as both a profession and a discipline occurs among unique and diverse persons.
Conclusions: The findings from this study reveal the value of providing a transcultural caring immersion experience to students from a Nursing as Caring theoretical perspective.
Keywords: American Indian/Alaska Native; caring; students; transcultural/diversity.
© The Author(s) 2015.