Diversity In The Nursing Field

Posted By Erica Bettencourt Thu, Mar 17, 2016 @ 02:31 PM

The profession of Nursing is engaged in a consistent conversation about the state of Diversity in Nursing. The way these figures are tallied are by comparing the percentage of individuals of various ethnic or cultural backgrounds in the general population to the relative group percentages in the field of Nursing. Many professional Nursing publications have been observant that Diversity in the Nursing field has improved, but there is still much additional room for continued improvement.

Where we've been

While a century ago the profession was nearly entirely comprised of white females, the increased Diversity enjoyed in the present day still falls short of being an accurate representation of the population breakdowns of society at large. According to 2016 census data, the only minority group meeting their group's needs in terms of proportionate population is Asians, who have actually managed to overrepresent their group by almost 5% when compared to the percentage of Asians in American patient populations.

A changing national demographic

Whites are still over-represented in nearly all Nursing roles while Hispanic and African American Nurses still have ground to make up if they wish to accurately represent the proportion of their respective group populations who enter as patients in health care facilities. By 2044, national Census data aggregators and analysts believe that Americans of European descent will cease to be the majority of the US population, when at that time they are expected to make up 50% or less of the entire population.

Why Diversity should help

The hypothesis that Nurse Diversity is best for the outcome of patients is centered around the idea that minority patients will feel more comfortable. With the added comfort on the part of the patients, the hope is they will be more compliant with recommended medicines, procedures and recommendations of any kind. If the Nurses and doctors serving minority patients are of the same cultural or ethnic background as themselves, many believe that noticeably positive outcomes could result. This is all still theory, of course, and hasn't been able to be borne out in any specific studies or repeatable situations.

While the specifc data hasn't been borne out in scientific studies to explain a known patient benefit for increased minorities in the Nursing field, there is a lot of policy support and governmental approval of the notion. Fortunately for those who have taken on this cause as a personal conquest, the numbers of enrolled Nursing students is starting to include more minorities as well as more males in the field, another group historically greatly underrepresented. A lot of the Diversity increase being noticed in Nursing school enrollment has been unbalanced from state to state. A closer look shows more enrolled Nursing students in Southern states versus Northern ones and more in the West than in the East.