The Professional Issues in Nursing: Ethnic Diversity - Essay Example

Racism and prejudice are the root cause and the most evident reality of a certain barrier to increasing the number of minority health care professionals, particularly among non-White females. Patients and co-workers still associate the nursing image with those of White, middle-aged women. According to the study of Douglas et al. (2009), standards integrating social justice will facilitate culturally-competent care among nurses and address racial and ethnic inequalities (p. 257). This is because the social justice principle is grounded on the belief in fair and equal rights regardless of differences in ethnicity and demographics.

Nursing schools must equip students with cultural competence and must still in mind social justice. The image of a nurse as a White, middle-aged woman must be gradually changed to an ethnically diverse, competent nurse to cope with the increasing need of the healthy population. In a period, the United States population will soon have a diverse set of population; thus, we need diverse, culturally-competent nurses to holistically address the needs of this population. Meanwhile, this vision of ethnically diverse, competent nurses will not become a reality if policies for ensuring implementation will not be integrated into legislation – both in the preparatory schools for nursing and in the workforce settings.

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