[paque80]

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum. I also just started nursing school 2 weeks ago. I'm still a excited and a little nervous. I hope everything will be fine. Anyway, one of the assignments that I have to do is to interview minority RN nurses a few questions:
1. In what way was your education more difficult or easier as a minority student?
2. What do you see as the barriers for minority nurses in our profession?
3. What do you see as the opportunity for minority nurses in our profession?
4. What do you view as the value of increasing diversity in the nursing profession for health care?
5. What do you think we can do as a profession and personally to increase diversity in nursing?

Please help and answer the above questions if you can. Thank you very much.

TT

[SharonH, RN]

Originally Posted by paque80

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum. I also just started nursing school 2 weeks ago. I'm still a excited and a little nervous. I hope everything will be fine. Anyway, one of the assignments that I have to do is to interview minority RN nurses a few questions:
1. In what way was your education more difficult or easier as a minority student?
2. What do you see as the barriers for minority nurses in our profession?
3. What do you see as the opportunity for minority nurses in our profession?
4. What do you view as the value of increasing diversity in the nursing profession for health care?
5. What do you think we can do as a profession and personally to increase diversity in nursing?

Please help and answer the above questions if you can. Thank you very much.

TT

1. I do not feel that my minority status affected whether or not my education was difficult or not at all. I attended an HBCU and some of my instructors did seem to feel that this affected their difficulty getting contracts at local hospitals.

2. The barriers for some minority nurses are the same that a lot of nurses may face; namely financial, also for those with families they may have difficulty juggling classes and clinicals with family responsibilities.

3. The opportunities for minority nurses are wide open if you have the time and the committment to pursue those opportunities.

4. The value for increasing diversity is that exposure to different cultures, religions, and races offers all the opportunity to learn about different ways of viewing and treating illnesses as well as different people. This may decrease judgments and misunderstandings.


5. In order to increase diversity and attract nurses of all races, nursing has to be presented as a valuable and legitimate profession with opportunities for advancement and good pay. We want people to choose nursing first, not as an alternative to perceived more strenuous educational endeavors. That means we need to present ourselves as skilled and knowledgeable professionals and not the touchy-feeling handmaidens that some of us insist on putting forward as our image. There's more I could go into about educational levels but I won't go there.