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CNN's Anderson Cooper talks to a nurse who became a viral sensation after she evacuated a baby during Superstorm Sandy.

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From diversityinc.com

In the fall of 2005, Alister Martin seemed the most unlikely candidate for Harvard Medical School. Laid up in the hospital with “my face so swollen my mother didn’t recognize me,” he says, the high-school senior was recovering from a brutal gang attack. The situation had escalated to a point that law enforcement advised Martin’s mother, a Haitian immigrant, to pull her son from Neptune (N.J.) High School to avoid further trouble.

So Martin’s mom secured a $15,000 loan and sent her son to the private Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, where he completed his GED online while practicing 16 hours a day. Martin’s drive and unwavering desire to become a physician pointed him to Rutgers University’s Office for Diversity and Academic Success in the Sciences (ODASIS), whose Access-Med program prepares promising Black, Latino and other undergrads from underrepresented and economically disadvantaged groups for careers in medicine.

Four years later, Martin graduated from Rutgers with a 3.85 GPA and will begin Harvard Medical School this fall. “A miracle happened,” says Martin.

Each year, ODASIS serves roughly 500 at-risk undergrads, and nearly 800 of them have graduated since the program’s founding in 1985. Among the ODASIS class of 2009, 86 percent were accepted to medical school, up from 70 percent in 2007.

Still, Black, Latino and American Indian med students are rare. Three years ago, more than 40,000 people applied to medical school in the United States, with Blacks, Latinos and American Indians making up only about 15 percent of the applicant pool, reports the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), while comprising about one-third of the population. That same year, only 8.7 percent of doctors were from these underrepresented groups, according to a study published in the Journal of Academic Medicine.

The latest AAMC data shows only slight improvement: Among the 42,269 med-school applicants in 2009, only 16 percent were Black, Latino or American Indian. And this disparity extends beyond the potential physician pool—a mere 6.9 percent of people from underrepresented groups ended up as dentists in 2007, only 9.9 percent were pharmacists and just 6.2 percent were registered nurses.

But it’s critical that people from underrepresented groups be recruited into healthcare and other science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields because it will increase the quality of care for those groups and spur innovation. Black, Latino and American Indian/Pacific Islander physicians are nearly three to four times more likely than whites to practice in underserved communities, reports the AAMC.

The dearth of diversity in all STEM professions is what inspired the launch of ODASIS. In 1986, when the initiative first began, only one Black student from Rutgers was accepted to medical school, and he eventually became a radiologist.

STEM-Enrichment Success

ODASIS is a rigorous program that offers four years of step-by-step supplemental instruction, academic enrichment and career advice designed to increase the pipeline of underrepresented talent in all STEM fields. The program is managed by Trinidad native Dr. Kamal Khan, a tireless instructor and caring mentor. He ensures that a four-year academic plan is developed for each incoming freshman so he/she stays on track and pursues the appropriate opportunities.

As a result, these students, often the first in their families to attend college, gain self-confidence. Before ODASIS, says Martin, “I never really believed in myself.”

Academic customization and an integrated-learning approach have helped make ODASIS a success. As part of the Access-Med program, for example, Khan formed collaborative relationships with local healthcare institutions to provide students with research training, professional learning and hands-on experience. Most unique to this pipeline program is the seven-month MCAT (Medical College Admission Test)/DAT (Dental Admission Test) prep course.

Khan often starts working with students who have been identified as having an interest in the sciences the summer prior to their first semester at Rutgers. To facilitate the transition for these incoming freshmen, Khan developed a five-week summer prep program to expose students to basic math and chemistry that allows them to earn college credits toward their degree. This summer, with financial support from Merck & Co., Khan and his team are working with 25 students to help hone their basic math skills “so they can hit the ground running” when they enter college.

“Students were coming in not prepared to take science courses,” he says. “They didn’t have the basic college math to take a college science course. So [we'd have] to support them in the basics. And then by the time they finished the basics, they were in their second year and would say, ‘I don’t want to take the sciences. I’m going to be here forever.’”

But thanks to the support of local organizations, the Educational Opportunity Fund Central Office and Johnson & Johnson, Khan is creating a feeder pool of potential ODASIS students by working with local students as early as ninth grade. The goal: to provide laboratory exposure, SAT-prep instruction, college-admissions counseling and career advice. This year, more than 300 12th-grade students attended the ODASIS Saturday Scholars Academy, one of four separate college-prep programs Khan oversees.

“We also do workshops with parents,” he says. “We get parents very involved.”

What motivates ODASIS students to succeed? Setting high standards and being held accountable for their actions, says Khan. “If you walk into class late or you miss a session and get three red flags, you’re out of the program,” he says. “Why so strict? If you want to be a doctor and you miss the operation, someone dies. So we try to teach them to become mature at a young age.”

In addition to their regular coursework, ODASIS students are required to attend roundtable-style academic support sessions, study halls (up to 9 hours a week for freshmen), testing, motivational workshops and more. They also meet one-on-one with advisers twice a month to review their progress.

“If you’re not doing well, they will call your family,” warns Mekeme Utuk, an ODASIS graduate who just completed her first semester at Harvard Medical School.

In exchange, the students, who often come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, appreciate the support and opportunity. “All that I could take tutoring for, I took. I thought, ‘Why not? It can’t hurt; it’s just extra practice,’” recalls Utuk, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants.

The program also teaches undergrads how to study, critical for challenging courses such as organic chemistry. “I really didn’t know how to study. In high school, I would just cram for exams. But I didn’t know how to break down a chapter and take good notes … and learn through repetition,” says Utuk. “ODASIS made me a better thinker.”

11:10AM EDT October 5. 2012 -From USAtoday.com

As Baby Boomers age into retirement by the millions each year, their growing health care needs require more people to administer that care.

That makes fields such as nursing one of the fastest-growing occupations, and hospitals are hiring now to prepare for what's to come.

Central Florida Health Alliance has 140 to 170 open positions a week, and almost 90% of them are for jobs that include registered nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and pharmacy technicians, says Holly Kolozsvary, human resources director.

The two-hospital system based in Leesburg and The Villages is hiring for its peak season from January to April, when many retirees seek winter refuge in the Florida sun. But it's also managing a trend that requires it to employ more people year-round: More retirees aren't leaving at the end of spring, Kolozsvary says.

"It's kind of a domino effect," she says. "They move here, they're well, they get sick, they're left here through their cancer or heart disease, and we have to take care of them."

Job postings on Monster.com for positions including registered nurses, physical therapists and physician assistants rose 13% from June 2011 through June 2012, according to a 2012 health occupational report by the job site.

The additional demand could be due partly to hospitals preparing for the retirements of many older nurses as the economy gets better, increasing the need for new skilled workers. Scripps Health, a group of five hospitals and 23 outpatient facilities in San Diego, plans to hire about 400 nurses a year over the next three years but might need to increase that by 200 annually because of retirements, says Vic Buzachero, senior vice president for human resources. About 30% of the hospitals' nurses are older than 50.

Jamie Malneritch applied for a part-time job as a registered nurse with Scripps in March and heard from the hospital the same day she submitted her application. She started working a month later.

The 31-year-old, who has worked as a nurse for four years, says the job security and growth opportunities were primary drivers in her decision to go to nursing school in 2006.

"It seems like we always need more hands," she says. "Nursing is flourishing."

With an average salary of $64,690 a year, according to 2010 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, registered nursing may be the more desired profession, but lower-paid home health aides are actually in higher demand.

An industry shift that puts more emphasis on outpatient care and home health services makes home health and personal care aides two of the fastest-growing occupations in the country. Employment in both positions, which have an average salary of about $20,000 a year, is expected to grow by about 70% by 2020, BLS data show. Registered nursing is expected to grow 26%.

ResCare HomeCare, a national provider and employer of home health and personal care aides, who work primarily with seniors with chronic illnesses or disabilities, has received 32,000 applications this year, a 23.3% jump from last year, and it hired 6,000 of the people who applied, about 5% more than in 2011, says Shelle Womble, senior director of sales.

Home health and personal care aides are generally the same, providing services such as checking vitals, prepping meals and bathing and grooming the patient. But home health aides are funded by Medicare and, in some states, require more training, while personal care aides are funded privately and may require less training, Womble says.

ResCare, where aides make $22,000 to $30,000 a year, is anticipating the need for more workers in the near future.

"Right now, one of our key positions is that we are hiring the talent before we even get the clients so we can be prepared and have the staff available," Womble says of home health and personal care aides. "There's a lot more competition for that type of employee."

By TESS VIGELAND

Published: March 21, 2012

How far would you go for a financial comeback? Heading to North Dakota’s oil boom and other stories of post-recession striving.

IN 2007, Kurt Edwards figured he would be stacking and racking 80-pound boxes of dog food and celery in the back of a grocery store for the rest of his working life. And he was fine with that.

But that June, after nine years on the job, layoff notices arrived on the warehouse floor at the Farmer Jack store in Detroit where he worked. His employer, Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, closed the Farmer Jack chain. Today he still does a lot of lifting, but of people, not boxes. Mr. Edwards joined the ranks of former warehouse, factory and autoworkers trading in their coveralls and job uncertainty for nurses’ scrubs.

At 49, divorced with no children, he now tends to patients on the graveyard shift at Sheffield Manor Nursing and Rehab Center, a two-story, gray brick building in a ramshackle neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. Interviewed last month, he says he is making about $70,000 annually, $20,000 more than he did at the warehouse.

The story of how he made the transition is one that men like him appear to be telling with increasing frequency, and the demand for their services is what is setting so many of them on similar paths.

Hard figures are elusive, but the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth estimates a shortage of 18,000 nurses in the state by 2015 — and the labor force is adapting.

Oakland University in nearby Rochester, Mich., has established a program specifically to retrain autoworkers in nursing — about 50 a year since 2009. And the College of Nursing at Wayne State University in Detroit is enrolling a wide range of people switching to health careers, including former manufacturing workers, said Barbara Redman, its dean. “They bring age, experience and discipline,” she said.

David Pomerville brings a few more years than Mr. Edwards. A 57-year-old nursing student, he spent most of his career as an automotive vibration engineer, including almost 10 years at General Motors. His pink slip arrived in April 2009.

At the time, Mr. Pomerville was earning almost $110,000 a year at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground in Milford Township, Mich.

But having watched another round of bloodletting at G.M. three years earlier, he had already decided on nursing as his Plan B. “I thought, ‘Well, I worked on cars for this long, now I’m going to work on people for a while,’ ” he said.

A married father of two and grandfather of two, Mr. Pomerville had almost no money saved when he was laid off. But the federal Trade Readjustment Act, which aids workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign competition, paid for nursing school tuition. His wife is a teacher, and he receives unemployment benefits. He hopes to graduate at the end of this year, and he expects his salary will be about half what he used to make.

Timothy Henk ultimately decided not to try to stick it out as long as Mr. Pomerville did. Mr. Henk, 32, worked for eight years at the Ford Sterling Axle Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., installing drive shafts in the F-150 truck, and was making about $25 an hour by 2007. With overtime, he earned $70,000 a year.

But as he and his wife contemplated having children, he worried that income would not last. So in 2007, he took a buyout, which included $15,000 a year for four years to put toward education. Two friends in nursing — both women — had suggested he look into joining their profession. He researched the demand for nurses in Michigan and used the buyout money to pay his tuition at Wayne State.

The amount of schooling required to be a nurse depends on the level of nursing a student chooses to pursue. Mr. Henk went through Wayne State’s four-year program to obtain a bachelor of science in nursing and then took a licensing exam to become a registered nurse, or R.N. Other levels of nursing include the C.N.A., or certified nurse’s aide, which can require as little as eight weeks of training plus a certification exam, and L.P.N., or licensed practical nurse, which requires one or two years of schooling and a licensing exam.

All of that assumes acceptance in a nursing program. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing said more than 67,000 applicants were turned away in 2010 for lack of faculty or classroom space — not a good sign with a national nursing shortage projected to be as high as 500,000 by 2025.

Mr. Henk now works in the critical care unit at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. He makes about $50,000 annually for a 36-hour workweek, though Ford’s health insurance was better.

The choice to make this switch was probably least likely for Mr. Edwards, the former grocery worker. He dropped out of college and spent four years in the Army as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He found his unionized warehouse job after a stint working for his father, an accountant.

“You have this plan, this goal,” he said. “I was going to be at this warehouse; all the guys were retiring with great benefits. I was part of the middle class, and I was going to make it.”

When it became clear that he would not make it to retirement there, someone he was dating suggested nursing.

Though he wrote it off as woman’s work at first, he realized he was getting a bit old for manual labor. So he returned to school, living on unemployment checks and occasional groceries from by his mother. He spent the last four months of his L.P.N. training with no electricity because he could not afford to pay any bills except rent.

Once he finished, the Sheffield Manor administrator, LaKeshia Bell, pretty much hired him on the spot. “They are like a hot commodity,” she said. “A male presence actually helps us in the facility.” At 5 feet 9 inches tall and 220 pounds, Mr. Edwards lifts patients as easily as he stacked boxes.

But he still appears to be a rarity. Just 7 percent of employed registered nurses are men, according to a 2008 Department of Health and Human Services survey. It did not count licensed practical nurses. Still, the percentage of people certified in nursing in some way who are men has risen to 9.6 percent since 2000 from 6.2 percent before, according to the department.

Ms. Bell noted that new nurses coming from manufacturing had unusual adjustments to make. When dealing with parts on the factory floor, she said, repetition is a major part of the job. “These are not parts. They’re people, so you can’t just have a set regimen like in a plant setting,” she said.

That cultural shift goes both ways. Mr. Edwards’s supervisor, Yvonne Gipson, provided an example. “I mean Kurt is not an ugly man, O.K.?” she said. “You got all these female workers, and they’re all looking at him like, ‘Oh! Potential husband!’ So, yes, it does change.” Her voice trailed off, erupting into peals of laughter as Mr. Edwards slipped a $20 bill into her pocket.

While these success stories point to opportunity, Michigan’s unemployment rate is still 9 percent. And Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says history is a cruel taskmaster when it comes to struggling industries.

“When one industry goes in decline and another comes to the fore, you don’t have a one-to-one employment replacement at all,” he said. “It takes a decade, two decades. In the meantime, some people find their careers are ended, ruined, and they never get them back.”

For these new nurses, the advantage is the demand in Michigan. Mr. Edwards knows he is lucky. “You know I wake up every day and I’m very proud,” he said. “I’m looking in the mirror. I’m happy. I’m proud. I’m saying, you know, this turned out great. The lights are on!”

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: June 23, 2012

Ms. Matton, a nurse, works at Abington Memorial Hospital, one of hundreds around the country that have started to require that their nurses have at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Many more hospitals prefer to hire those with such degrees.

That shift has contributed to a surge in enrollment in nursing courses at four-year colleges, particularly at the more than 600 schools that have opened “R.N. to B.S.N.” programs, for people who are already registered nurses to earn bachelor’s degrees. Fueled by the growth in online courses, enrollment in such programs is almost 90,000, up from fewer than 30,000 a decade ago, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

The need is so great that nurses without bachelor’s degrees are still in demand. But experts say that may change in years to come, particularly at hospitals, the largest segment of the profession and one of the best paid.

Enrollment in community college programs, the typical path to becoming a nurse, remains strong, but many of those schools are looking for new arrangements, like partnerships with four-year schools, to keep their graduates competitive.

Ms. Matton, 37, first went to college for an associate degree in radio and television broadcasting. By the time she returned to school for an associate’s in nursing, she was a wife and mother — she gave birth to her youngest a few days before taking an exam. Now she is weeks away from her third degree, a bachelor’s in nursing from Drexel University in Philadelphia, with most of the work done online.

“I wanted to get the bachelor’s at the start, but I needed to start earning some money,” said Ms. Matton, whose husband, Joel, is a computer programmer. “Now I need to do this for job security, to have opportunities down the road.”

Schools like Drexel have seized the opportunity. Its online R.N. to B.S.N. program began in the late 1990s with a few dozen students and today has 650. Over all, its College of Nursing and Health Professions has doubled over the last decade, to about 2,400 students, making it one of the nation’s largest.

“There are several hospitals in our region, like Abington, that will hire nonbaccalaureate nurses but give you a certain number of years to finish the baccalaureate, and some that won’t even interview you without it,” said Gloria Donnelly, dean of the nursing college.

Such policies are limited to a small fraction of the nation’s more than 5,000 hospitals — while no definitive count exists, they tend to be teaching hospitals in major metropolitan areas — but the number is rising fast. Hospital and nursing school officials say most hospitals insisting on bachelor’s degrees began doing so in the last five years, like Abington, a suburban hospital north of Philadelphia, which adopted its policy in 2010.

Surveys show that most hospitals prefer to hire nurses with bachelor’s degrees, though they often cannot find enough. Lawmakers in several states, including New York, have introduced bills that would require at least some hospital staff nurses to have bachelor’s degrees within 10 years, though none have become law.

No matter the type of nursing school, a graduate who passes a national licensing exam becomes an R.N., and for decades, that was the only credential that mattered to hospitals. (Licensed practical nurses, or L.P.N.’s, who take a different version of the exam, can perform fewer functions and are being phased out of hospitals.)

Not long ago, most nurses did not go to college at all, but to nursing schools run by hospitals — including one still run by Abington — that do not confer degrees. As recently as the mid-1980s, half of the country’s registered nurses had started that way. But by then, hospital-based schools were closing in droves, and community college education was becoming the norm.

Still, professional groups and employers continue to push for more education, citing studies linking better-educated nurses to better patient care. Where traditional nursing education focuses on practical skills, students in four-year programs learn more about theory, public health and research.

An added incentive for hospitals is the coveted “magnet” designation, awarded by the American Nurses Association to about 400 hospitals and sometimes featured in their advertising. Among the association’s criteria for magnet status is the nursing staff’s level of education.

A 2008 federal government survey showed that among newly minted nurses, only 3 percent had graduated from nondegree programs, 58 percent from community colleges, and 39 percent from four-year colleges. With more of them returning to school, half of the nation’s 3 million registered nurses had a bachelor’s or master’s degree in nursing.

In 2010, the Institute of Medicine called for raising that figure to 80 percent by 2020, but that is a tall order.

“The baccalaureate programs can’t find enough qualified instructors, so they turn away tens of thousands of qualified applicants every year,” said Geraldine Bednash, chief executive of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. “There’s going to be a big need for community-college-educated nurses for a long time, but they may be increasingly limited to nonhospital settings.”

But many community colleges are finding ways to appeal to students who want more than an associate degree. A handful of community colleges have won permission to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing — notably Miami Dade College, one of the nation’s largest, which started its bachelor’s program in 2008 — and other schools have petitioned state regulators and accreditation agencies to do the same.

Many more junior colleges have made arrangements with four-year colleges to help nursing students move more readily from one to the other. In Oregon, eight community colleges and the state’s Health and Science University have shared a nursing curriculum since 2006, an approach since adopted by others around the country.

“I really don’t foresee a day when the nursing pipeline can continue without community colleges, but we have to take steps to ensure our graduates remain marketable, and some programs may not survive in the long run,” said Nell Ard, director of nursing at Collin College, a community college outside Dallas. Each Collin nursing student is enrolled simultaneously in one of two four-year state schools, allowing for a seamless transfer.

But a bachelor’s program sets a high a bar for many would-be nurses and working nurses, who are older than their counterparts of a generation ago and are more likely to have family obligations. It is, increasingly, a second career; the typical starting age is around 30.

“My school puts more pressure on us, no question, and more household stuff falls to the wayside,” said Ms. Matton, 37, sitting in her kitchen and eating a hamburger her husband had waiting when she got home. She shifted a few years ago to working part time.

Yet she endorses the bachelor’s requirement, pointing to the high stakes of her job, working in the emergency room. On a recent day that she described as slow, she had treated, among others, a middle-aged man who fainted in the heat and needed a cardiac work-up, a young woman in withdrawal from an opiate addiction, a pregnant woman with abdominal pain who spoke no English, an elderly woman with a badly infected thumbnail, an elderly man with gastrointestinal bleeding who had an adverse reaction to a plasma transfusion, and a young man whose tingling hands, head pain and elevated blood pressure persuaded a doctor to order a CT scan.

“It blows me away how much influence nurses have on serious treatment decisions,” Ms. Matton said. “After going back to school, I think more critically about what we’re doing, and I have a better understanding of why we’re doing it.”

By Shantelle Coe RN BSN - Diversity and Inclusion Consultant

Creating an environment that embraces diversity and equality not only attracts the most qualified nursing candidates, but an inclusive environment also helps to assure that the standards of nursing care include “cultural competency.”  Cultural differences can affect patient assessment, teaching and patient outcomes, as well as overall patient compliance.

Lack of cultural competence is oftentimes a barrier to effective communication amongst interdisciplinary teams, which can often trickle down to patients and their families.

With the increase in global mobility of people, the patient population has become more ethnically diverse, while the nursing forces remain virtually unchanged.  Nursing staff work with patients from different cultural backgrounds.  Consequently, one of the challenges facing nurses is the provision of care to culturally diverse patients.  Hospitals and healthcare agencies must accommodate these needs by initiating diversity management and leadership practices.

According to Cross, T., Bazron, B., Dennis, K., and Isaacs, M. (1989); these are the 5 essential elements that contribute to an institutions ability to become more culturally competent:

• Valuing diversity

• Having the capacity for cultural self-assessment.

• Being conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact.

• Having institutionalized cultural knowledge.

• Having developed adaptations of service delivery reflecting an understanding of  cultural diversity. 

A culturally competent organization incorporates these elements in the structures, policies and services it provides, and should be a part of its overall vision.

From all levels, the nursing workforce should reflect the diversity of the population that it serves.  A more diverse workforce will push for better care of underserved groups.  It’s important to note that that diversity, inclusion, and cultural awareness isn't just about race or ethnicity.  We must always keep in mind socioeconomic status, gender, and disability in our awareness.

Becoming more inclusive is a shared responsibility between nurses and healthcare agencies.  Becoming an “agent of change” within your facility can inspire awareness and affect attitudes and perceptions amongst your peers. 

Nurses and healthcare workers must not rely fully on the hospital and healthcare systems to institute an environment of cultural awareness.   

Nurses can increase their own cultural competencies by following a few guidelines:                                   

• Recognizing cultural differences and the diversity in our population.

• Building your own self-awareness and examining your own belief systems.

• Describing and making assessments based on facts and direct observation.

• Soliciting the advice of team members with experience in diverse backgrounds.

• Sharing your experiences honestly with other team members or staff to keep communication lines open.  Acknowledging any discomfort, hesitation, or concern.

• Practicing politically correct communication at all times –  avoid making assumptions or stereotypical remarks.

• Creating a universal rule to give your time and attention when communicating.

• Refraining from making a judgment based on a personal experience or limited interaction.

• Signing up for diversity and inclusions seminars.

• Becoming involved in your agencies diversity programs – find out what your resources are - most institutions have something in place.

By incorporating a few of these steps into your daily nursing practice, you are taking steps towards becoming culturally competent.

Inclusive nurses demonstrate that we are not only clinically proficient and culturally competent, but are the essence and spirit of the patients that we care for.

By Christina Orlovsky, senior writer, and Karen Siroky, RN, MSN, contributor

As the nation’s population becomes more diverse, so do the needs of the patient population that enters U.S. hospitals. As caregivers with direct contact with patients from a wide spectrum of races, ethnicities and religions, nurses need to be aware and respectful of the varying needs and beliefs of all of their patients.

In its position statement on cultural diversity in nursing practice, the American Nurses Association (ANA) states that: “Knowledge of cultural diversity is vital at all levels of nursing practice…nurses need to understand: how cultural groups understand life processes; how cultural groups define health and illness; what cultural groups do to maintain wellness; what cultural groups believe to be the causes of illness; how healers cure and care for members of cultural groups; and how the cultural background of the nurse influences the way in which care is delivered.”

Additionally, the Joint Commission requires that all patients have the right to care that is sensitive to, respectful of and responsive to their cultural and religious/spiritual beliefs and values. Assessment of patients includes cultural and religious practices in order to provide appropriate care to meet their special needs and to assist in determining their response to illness, treatment and participation in their health care.

There are a number of ways to comply with the requirements for providing culturally diverse care.

First, be self-aware; know how your views and behavior is affected by culture. Appreciate the dynamics of cultural differences to anticipate and respond to miscommunications. Seek understanding of your patients cultural and religious beliefs and values systems. Determine their degree of compliance with their religion/culture, and do not assume.

Furthermore, respond to patients’ special needs, which may include food preferences, visitors, gender of health care workers, medical care preferences, rituals, gender roles, eye contact and communication style, authority and decision making, alternative therapies, prayer practices and beliefs about organ or tissue donation.

Kathleen Hanson, Ph.D., MN, associate professor and interim executive associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Iowa, summarized the importance of learning cultural diversity in nursing education.

“Cultural competency is threaded throughout the nursing school curriculum. We teach every course with the idea that there’s content that may need to be explained for a diverse student group,” Hanson said. “In nursing, cultural competency has been around for a long time. I think that’s probably something that the nursing profession recognized maybe a bit before some other disciplines. We’ve always worked in public health, so we have always seen the diversity of America.”

Hanson concluded: “We need to be able to care for diverse populations because our country is growing increasingly diverse. Oftentimes persons who are in minority groups or who are underrepresented have different health care needs. It’s important for us to have a student population that is as equally diverse as our client; we need to prepare a workforce that not only knows how to work with diverse peoples, but also represents them.”

by Lynda Lampert

If you have an iPhone, iPad or other mobile device, you likely have a ton of apps taking up space. While some of those apps are likely tailored for fun (Angry Birds, Words with Friends), there’s no question that you can use your smartphone to serve your nursing career.

Of course, when you’re in your scrubs and ready to tackle the shift, using mobile apps to get information on drugs to anatomy to conditions is a no-brainer way to better treat your patients and keep reference materials easily accessible. Here’s a look at 20 top clinical apps for nurses in 2012!

Not all of these apps are free, but when you think about the great services they provide—such as keeping you on top of ever-changing medical data—it’s well worth the money.

This table shows the number of students enrolled in generic (entry-level) Baccalaureate, Master's, and Doctoral (research-focused) programs in nursing from 2002 to 2011.

Credit

Here is a chart let you know the largest number of healthcare professions which is 2.6 million registered nurses in USA also show how much they earn in different levels.
Nurses have always played a first-rate role in people’s lives. They perform a wide range of clinical and non-clinical functions that are necessary in the delivery of health care
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist salary around $135,000
Nurse Researcher salary around $95,000
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner salary around $95,000
Nurse Practitioner salary around $78,000
Clinical Nurse Specialist salary around $76,000
Gerontological Nurse Practitioner salary around $75,000