We live in a diverse world with people from many different ethnic backgrounds. This diversity comes with challenges for the healthcare worker. The purpose of this post is to define diversity in my own words. Additionally, I will discuss the benefits of a diverse healthcare workforce along with the barriers to diversity in nursing. Finally, I will share how my cultural background affects the nursing care I provide.
I define diversity as the many different populations found in the world. For my purposes this includes race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, and age, to name a few. Essentially, it is the understanding that we are all unique with different beliefs with different expectations from life and our surroundings. Diversity is also about understanding that everyone has the right to practice beliefs which may be very unknown and foreign to others. Lastly, it is accepting that people may differ in beliefs, but …show more content…
Currently, the nursing workforce does not represent the populations it serves (Haynes, 2016). The benefits of a diverse workforce are many. According to Andrews and Boyle (2016), one benefit is improved decision making and sensitivity to the health care needs of a community. A benefit of having patients of diverse backgrounds is the creation of opportunities to learn cultural differences from each other and use the diverse workforce population as a resource.
There are many barriers to a diverse nursing staff. One barrier would be the obstacles in the education system for minority and male students (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). There is a need to assure these populations are represented in nursing programs. Additionally, at the college level, there is the lack of recruitment geared toward a diverse population (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). There is also the lack of nursing faculty and clinical sites which limits the number students the school can
I define diversity as the many different populations found in the world. For my purposes this includes race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, and age, to name a few. Essentially, it is the understanding that we are all unique with different beliefs with different expectations from life and our surroundings. Diversity is also about understanding that everyone has the right to practice beliefs which may be very unknown and foreign to others. Lastly, it is accepting that people may differ in beliefs, but …show more content…
Currently, the nursing workforce does not represent the populations it serves (Haynes, 2016). The benefits of a diverse workforce are many. According to Andrews and Boyle (2016), one benefit is improved decision making and sensitivity to the health care needs of a community. A benefit of having patients of diverse backgrounds is the creation of opportunities to learn cultural differences from each other and use the diverse workforce population as a resource.
There are many barriers to a diverse nursing staff. One barrier would be the obstacles in the education system for minority and male students (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). There is a need to assure these populations are represented in nursing programs. Additionally, at the college level, there is the lack of recruitment geared toward a diverse population (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). There is also the lack of nursing faculty and clinical sites which limits the number students the school can