An astounding lack of diversity in nursing

[ZASHAGALKA]

https://allnurses.com/forums/f34/african-american-male-nurse-practitioners-4734.html

I pasted my comment from another thread (above) into its own thread because I'm interested in why y'all think there is such a lack of diversity in nursing and what you think the solutions should be.

This is a touchy subject, I know, so I only ask that you keep your comments respectful and constructive:

As a minority we experience many unnecessary, unexplainable things that our equal counterparts never even have to deal with, like be confused with all of the healthcare team auxillary members (CNA,house keeping,PT,RT,patient escort, lab tech, pharm tech, etc...) while having a badge that Ray Charles could see identifying us as an RN!!!!! When you pretend to yourself that it doesn't happen, it is because you have probably been guilty of it yourself. Have you noticed how receptive people are to a young (majority) male in scrubs/lab coat versus a minority male in scrubs/lab coat?????? The minority could actually be the MD and majority the scrub tech, but guess who gets the MD RESPECT?

Older thread I came across but wanted to comment on this:

First, some demographics: in the U.S. as of 2000, RNs are comprised of:

http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/reports/changingdemo/composition.htm#3.3.2

White Female: 82%

non-Hispanic African American Female: 4.9%

Asian Female: 3.5%

Hispanic Female: 2%

Native American Female: 0.7%

Mixed/Other race Female: 1.2%

White Male: 4.7%

All other Male: 1.0%

3 points:

1. The key statistic here is that only ONE PERCENT of nurses are non-white males. If I mistake a minority male as being somebody OTHER than a nurse, sure, there might be some built-in cultural bias there, but it's just as likely that it's because of the rarity of such nurses in the first place.

Now, you might argue that the rarity is the real problem and I would agree. A profession that under-represents minorities by a factor of 3 and males by a factor of 9 needs to ask itself one potent question: why?

2. I think the OP has had a difficult time over the years finding fellow minority male NPs because those nurses would be a fraction of the ONE PERCENT total number of non-white male nurses. A small pool to swim in, to be sure.

3. As demographics change, nursing is simply going to be forced to address this issue of an astounding lack of diversity in its ranks. As our nation drops below 50% "white" in the next decade or two, it will simply become unfeasible to continue to recruit 86.6% of RNs (male and female combined) from the shrinking pool of whites in this nation. Think real hard about that last statistic: something is amiss in how we recruit nurses. Something's broken and needs to be fixed.

(disclaimer: it's not my intent to be biased against LVN/LPNs, however, I got my stats from government links that only tabulated RNs.)

~faith,

Timothy.

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

Timothy, I have two questions I'd like you to address.

The WHY aren't more minorities interested in a nursing career. Obviously no solution will be effective until this is understood. I don't have any personal experience to help me understand what prevents a minority individual from making the same descision I did.

And how you think that lessening the attrition % at schools will help minorities any more than white individuals.

I'm lucky to be going to a school at a military base where diversity is a fact of life. I think I'm also lucky that my school doesn't seem to play as many head games as I've read here on the board. The teachers are supportive and I've never heard of anyone failing clinicals because the teachers will just keep recycling teaching with testing for you to pass. HOWEVER, we still lost 12 out of 41 students the first semester because of grades. The school should be punished because the students didn't study enough?

People (no matter what race) still need to take personal responsibility and step up if they want to pass.

I addressed your first question much earlier in the thread. I think it's a combination of a lack of personal role models (less percentages of family members in nursing) combined with the current demographics of nursing sending a powerful suggestion that minorities can't break that glass barrier.

Substitute women in corporate America for this debate for just a moment. Let me suggest that more women aren't CEOs or highly elected politicians because they aren't interested: I mean - WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE ABOUT WOMEN! It just so happens that more men want those jobs, more pursue it, and so more attain it. It's not MY fault as a male that I was the one that got the CEO position.

A few people suggested that nursing is more of a service, "dirty" job that rebels against past historical perspectives. I don't think so. Others have rightly pointed out that there are more minority LPN/LVNs and certainly there are a better mix of minorities in UAP jobs: so that doesn't make sense to me. I think there is a real issue of evaluating success in a field that proves by its very demographics to be relatively out of reach for too many.

So, I think the issue is promoting the idea of becoming an RN as one that IS within reach.

That is ONE of the reasons I suggested the concept of attrition, your second question. Better effort at reducing attrition would help everyone. IF your concern is getting through the program, for whatever reason, that is just more reason to reach for it. THAT concept would break through for more minorities, allowing them to grasp hold of the concept of getting through if they can just get in.

As far as placing the burden on programs for the academic success of their students, I think that is entirely relevant. The PLACE to determine success if BEFORE matriculation. Those seats are just too darn precious to throw them away as easily as most programs do.

We have all kinds of entry standards and exams to evaluate potential success. THAT is the place to make those determinations. Once made, the programs should be forced to place as their prime directive, not just the pass rate of grads, but getting those students to that finish line, as well.

~faith,

Timothy.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

If other states mirror mine the majority of LVN/LPNs are minority nurses. I think there should be tuition, stipend, mentoring programs to encourage and assist these nurses to earn their RN. And especially more "bridge" programs.

It would improve the lack of diversity while lessenining the RN shortage at the same time.

And these nurses have proven they can handle aspects of nursing many cannot.

I agree with what you have mentioned. Over this past summer, I was reading a statistic from Medscape that indicated that the pool of LPNs/LVNs in America includes many more racial-ethnic minorities than the pool of American RNs.

I am one of these minority LVNs. Currently I am taking classes at a local community college, attempting to gain acceptance into an LVN-to-RN bridge program in the area.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I'm going to have to agree with this. I have found a handfull of scholarships that are avaliable to me. I think without exception they are 'national' companies offering them to anyone. I can find page after page of scholarships avaliable based upon race and I don't have a problem with the idea of it. If some Indian tribes want to have scholarships for their children to go to school and then come back, no problem here. Beyond these few highly competitive programs I cannot find a single scholarship that will offset any of my education that doesn't come with terms I'm not willing to accept.

This means that I'm paying for mine as I go out of pocket.

Back to your regularly scheduled debate...

I am an African-American female who recently paid off over $20,000 in student loans. The plethora of race-based scholarships does not truly exist. The largest scholarship award I have received in my lifetime was $350.00 and it was not race-based.

I, too, am currently paying for my classes with my hard-earned dollars. Please stop spinning these bigotry-dusted inaccuracies.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

If I were having a baby I wouldn't want a male nurse...

I apolgize for sounding rude or offensive, but here's my blunt point of view.

It is tremendously silly for a laboring woman to refuse care from a male L&D nurse when she will turn around and willingly accept care from a male obstetrician. Most obstetricians are males. Actually, the male doctor gets to see more 'action' than the male nurse (episiotomy cuts, lady partsl rugae, everything, etc).

[GardenDove]

I wouldn't want a male doctor either. I had homebirths with midwives. I go to a female doctor.

[sunnyjohn]

Just a tidbit of information-

The most of scholarships listed on minoritynurse.com are NOT exclusively for minorities. Most are not administered by minoritynurse.com but by outside groups. If you contact those same groups, they can provide you with a list of scholarships they offer.

The site itself administers only one scholarship which is open to African Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans/ Alaska natives and Filipinos.

I think most would admit that Filipinos sure are well represented in US nursing.

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

I think most would admit that Filipinos sure are well represented in US nursing.

While I agree, let me suggest that, in the original demographics I posted, since Filipinos are represented under the 3.5% Asian demographics, there goes the argument that all our jobs are being 'farmed in'.

~faith,

Timothy.

[pickledpepperRN]

I am an African-American female who recently paid off over $20,000 in student loans. The plethora of race-based scholarships does not truly exist. The largest scholarship award I have received in my lifetime was $350.00 and it was not race-based.

I, too, am currently paying for my classes with my hard-earned dollars. Please stop spinning these bigotry-dusted inaccuracies.

My experience was that LVN school was much more difficult than either my ADN program or the BSN program I later attended.

In LVN school we had classes on Monday. The Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday a pre conference befor working the entire 8 hour shift, next a post conference, and a long drive home. We were expected to do elaborate care plans, read chapters for upcoming material, and study for a Friday test. We were in class 7 hours on Friday.

I believe anyone who earned their LVN in such a program can become an RN if they are motivated.

I agree with NRSKarenRN that hospitals could be using LPN/LVNs to improve patient care during the "shortage".

I also think active recruitment by RN colleagues to encourage LPNs to go on to their RN is so needed.

Recently I took two wonderful youg women and their families to IHOP. The LVN is blace from a family of women who raised families on welfare. She is a charge nurse in a SNF and now attending nursing school. Although it is a community college and she has finished all pre requisites it takes a lot os planning and giving up sleep to support herself. She needs moral support so her pregnant again mother and many sinblings were invited to IHOP. I think her loving mother now has some understanding that this woman is not ready to have a baby. She knows she can't move back home because she would have no one who understand her need to study or to sleep.

I think she will be a fine RN and asset to the profession.

The other is the daughter of non English speakers. She is quite young and married with no children. Her husband was worried about the drop in income when she goes pert time in her job as a CNA to attend nursing school. She is now taking pre requisites and working full time. When I showed him their next five years with lower income for two then a BIG increase for the next three and foreseable future with ahis wife an RN he got it! He jokes that it would be his turn next.

VegRN: Guilty here. My Dad is white but I just check "African American". I don't think my color was a disadvantage or advantage at the time I went to nursing school. If I had wanted to go right out of high school many schools had maximum quotas for blacks. Some didn't accept them at all.

[TrudyRN]

My parents were poor, from Jewish immigrant families, and believe me, they weren't 'recruited' for anything but got where they did through hard work, inner drive, and by valueing education. They worked their way through college. They grew up in an era of blatent anti-Semitism, nothing like the politically correct age in which we now live.

My father's father was a tailor whose parents came from Austria. His mother's parents came from Russia, escaping pogroms. My mother's paternal grandfather was the only survivor, along with one brother, of a massacre of Jews in Lithiunia, and they survived by hiding in a hayloft. Her mother came over from Hungary at age 3. All of their relatives left in Europe were sent to concentration camps.

They grew up in the Great Depression in poverty. They and all of their siblings went to college in a time when not only was there no recruiting going on, but obstacles left and right. There was no office of minority affairs at their colleges to cater to their special needs. In spite of this, they and all of their families worked their way into positions of relative success. My mother ended up with a Masters in special ed, and my father was a math professor in a community college. They also were extremely thrifty and never wasted a dime on luxeries until they were well established in life. They played by the rules and succeeded.

My family has a similar background. Gramps was sent here at age 16 to escape the Russian army. Jewish boys were snatched by the Czar's army, often never to be heard from again. Their conscription lasted up to 30 years! Or until death, whichever came first. Gramps never saw his parents, homeland, or other family members again. Ever. Ever. He worked in this country as a tailor, a construction worker, whatever he could to support himself and the wife and children he eventually acquired. My grandmother was a homemaker/seamstress. She died so very young - only about 64. She and her family escaped Jew haters in Romania.

On Dad's side, his father escaped Hitler in Austria by about 2 months. And his Mom and her family got out of Russia when her older brother was also facing the Czar's conscription/death sentence.

My relatives have all done well here, despite the large and persistent doses of anti-Semitism (from name-calling and being kept out of public parks and some hospitals to physical altercations) they had to deal with. They worked like dogs, lived crammed into the Jewish ghetto, and eventually made successes of themselves. As Garden Dove said, no one recruited them for anything. They were not college-educated because they were too busy caring for children and making sure those kids had a decent education, too busy running the stores they acquired. My own father worked 6+ days every week, from 0900-1900 Mon-Fri and 09-21 on Saturday. He helped his brother in the brother's business on Sundays and did his own bookkeeping, thereby taking about half a day on Sunday. We never had a family vacation, we all worked from age 16. Mine is the first generation to go to college. And no one recruited me for Nursing either. I just fell into it, basically.

As for how to reach Hispanics, Asians, and Negroes to be nurses - the answer is really simple enough. We have to hold Career Days in their schools, we have to get with the leaders of their churches and mosques, we have to team up with the political and community leaders in their neighborhoods. There need to be TV and radio ads and ads in the magazines they read. And, of course, the best way would be for existing nurses who are among these groups to address their own people.

Just for the record - I have worked with nurses of every race, religion, and political view, both genders and every sexual viewpoint, and from several countries - Haiti, Britain, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico. Most were great nurses - RN's, LPN's, NP's, anesthetists. There is room for and need for everyone. I just wish people would try to stop looking so much at race and other unrelated attributes and start focusing on character and skills. Hmm, seems to me someone said that already. I think his initials were MLK. I, too, have a dream - that one shining day we will all be able to just get along. Now peace, y'all. :balloons: :blushkiss :smiletea2: :smiletea: :smilecoffeecup:

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

1. WHY aren't more minorities desiring to pursue nursing? This is an important question and addresses cultural differences.

Of course, I cannot speak for all African-Americans. I can only speak of my situation and growing-up years.

I had a very large extended family during my childhood; however, none of my relatives were college graduates who could show me the ropes or provide guidance regarding higher education. I would estimate that at least a third of my relatives are high-school dropouts and the remaining ones are high school graduates. Luckily, I had a good high school guidance counselor and was accepted to three regional state universities.

I ended up not going to the university after high school because my parents acted as obstructionists to my education. I personally think they suffered from a fear of the unknown. After all, they did not know what a credit hour was, didn't see the purpose of general education classes, and knew nothing about the road to obtaining a degree. They refused to cosign my student loans, so I had no other way to fund my schooling.

In addition, I think my family's socioeconomic status affected their views on educational attainment. I was raised in a very working-class family of three (mom, dad, and me). My mother worked the production floor at a solar products factory for 25 years and my father bounced back and forth from steady jobs to odd jobs. The statistics indicate that the individual is more likely to attend college if their parents attended college. The reasoning is simple: parents who are college graduates know the value of education and will instill it into their offspring. If you are a first-generation college student (like me), your parents will generally be supportive if you decide to study law, medicine, or engineering. My parents believed that it would be a waste of my time if I became anything else than a lawyer.

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

I believe anyone who earned their LVN in such a program can become an RN if they are motivated.

Absolutely. The issue isn't one of reality, but perception.

It seems that more minorities THINK they have a better chance at becoming an LVN/LPN because the demographics starkly point out that being an RN is more difficult for minorities.

And so, perception becomes reality. In this case, though, I agree with you: it's a distorted reality.

Having been both an LPN and an RN, if you can do the one, you can do the other. That might not be universal, but I bet it's close.

As Commuter points out, how much is the difference that becoming an LVN/LPN means not having to fully enter the unfamiliar territory of pre-reqs and general college credit? Maybe it's not as much an issue of ability as it is experience and guidance.

Two of the best nurses I have met over the years were both LVNs with years of experience and both minorities. The concept of seeking an RN was almost foreign to them, as far as I can tell. That's a shame, because they were both grossly underpaid for the value they gave their organizations. Then again, what LVN/LPN isn't?

~faith,

Timothy.

[SharonH, RN]

Out of all the replies in this thread, only MLOS has come close to identifying why some minorities MIGHT not push their children into nursing:

On an entirely different note, I have heard more than once from African-Americal parents that they would not encourage their children to pursue nursing. As we have frequently discussed here, nursing sometimes has an image problem among lay people: they focus on the perception of nurses as simply the assistants of doctors, and on the physical, "dirty" aspects of the job. Some minorities may well wish to put a great deal of distance between themselves and any career choice that could even remotely resemble the limited choice of dirty, menial jobs of the past.

Personally I don't care that nursing doesn't recruit more minorities. Those who are interested will pursue this field and they do. It's that simple. When nursing is more attractive to the general population, it will become more popular with minorities. As far as I know, there is no widespread perception among minorities that we are excluded from this field. As it has already been pointed out, the demographics of the nursing population will reflect the population of the people living there. Here in Atlanta, there are a lot of us. When I lived in El Paso, most of the nursing staff and administration were Mexican-American just like in the city.