The Need For Health Promotion For Minority Nurses And Students

By Linda Stewart


The minority is a group of the population that is unlike the majority. Such may be classified on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, culture among others. The need for diversified nursing students has grown overwhelmingly in hospitals and other healthcare facilities as they strive to have an all-inclusive workforce of nurses. Minority nurses are able to establish a good rapport with clients from similar cultures easily hence trust in earned easily. This is mainly because of the growing minority populations in many countries due to immigration and intermarriage with locals. Here is a summary on health promotion for minority nurses and students.

Minor communities often have a high proportion of immigrants who have limited language skills, especially in English. In cases where such individuals are in need of medical attention, attending to them turns out to a hard enough task as they cannot express themselves in a way that the health practitioners understand. Understanding the cultural beliefs also gets in the way in instances where they affect treating methods. Nurses with similar backgrounds are able to gain the trust of such clients easily hence the more need to have a diversified nursing workforce.

Nursing schools tend to have a developed interest in minorities who have a desire to practice holistic medicine especially in populations that are underrepresented. In order to achieve this, nursing schools require having higher numbers of minority applicants than the current applicants. The health campaigns thus push to encourage such individuals to go ahead and submit their applications in their institutions of choice.

Affirmative action helps minorities land into top-notch institutions by considering their race rather than their academic prowess. Such policies have encountered a lot of contradiction from local courts and interested parties arguing that admission should only be done on the basis of merit. Racism has also been pointed out. Diverse classrooms should, however, be considered as crucial to the health industry whichever way they are achieved.

Despite many interested parties pushing for increased enrollment of minorities, their retention in learning institutions remains low. Such students deal with difficulties like financial instability, family responsibilities and some even work to pay for their education. Learning institutions have tried to fill the gap by offering financial aid to the students who are not able to raise their fees. Increasing accessibility of classes for the learners balancing education, family, and work is also a way to keep such scholars in school.

Apart from gaining support from institutions of learning, minorities also experience some challenges that come as a result of being in school with other students. They experience bias on matters relating to academic skills, insufficient faculty role play models, awkward perceptions about their abilities, and limited peer to peer support.

Selective admission processes work to help the underrepresented students. Academic profiling sometimes leaves out some qualified minorities however as a number of them have pressure from their backgrounds because of being the first in their communities to attend higher education. Being considered as the saviors to their parents or siblings comes with the pressure that some of them are unable to contain.

Health promotions for the inclusion of minorities have to be done at the level of schools and health facilities. Diversification of the working force should be as important a factor as the other requirements when recruiting workers. Though most nurses from such social classes have difficulties adjusting at first and fitting in, they later prove to be very helpful and crucial in the institutions that decide to hire them.




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