Wounded by Words
Entering the patient’s room, I immediately took note of the look on the elderly woman’s face. There was no way I could look past her grimacing. As an African-American male nurse, I had seen this look before and knew it […]
Opening Doors
I always wanted a BSN, says Pilar De La Cruz. But being married and having two small children, I felt that I could not manage work, family life and four years of school at the same time. Faced with a
Caring Across the Language Barrier
The start of my junior year medical-surgical rotation began the same way it usually does for many other nursing students–with a feeling of nervousness due to the uncertainty of how my first day on the clinical unit would evolve. Upon
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One Name, Many Faces
The next time you read a statistic such as there are 2 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. with no health insurance or visits to the emergency room represent 18.8% of total visits to health care facilities
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Majoring in Minority Health
A decade ago, a smattering of nursing schools first began offering degree and certificate programs that focus specifically on minority health, eliminating health disparities and serving the needs of vulnerable patient populations. More recently, however, both the number and quality
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Minority Nurse Retention in Doctoral Programs: What Works and Why
The literature from professional nursing organizations is full of recommendations that nurses continue to advance their education by pursuing doctoral degrees, either in clinical practice or in research. In 2004 the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), after studying
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Till Death Do Us Part
As a Chinese American patient neared death in a nursing home, her family members wanted to follow their Buddhist tradition of gathering around their loved one to chant for 12 hours before and four hours after her passing. It was
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Filling a Need for Leaders
As just about everyone knows by now, Hispanics are not only the largest ethnic minority group in the U.S., they are also the fastest-growing. Yet study after study–from the Institute of Medicine’s 2003 Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities
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Mentoring New Nursing Graduates
There is a saying in our profession that nurses eat their young–referring to the way certain veteran nurses are said to treat new nursing graduates. But just what does this statement mean? Are nurses like wild animals that carry their
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Shaping the Future of Patient Care
Jamaican-born Diane Johnson, BSN, RN, MBA, dreamed of becoming a nurse at a very young age. Today, Johnson’s professional journey has led her far beyond what most people think a typical nurse’s job should be. As vice president of patient
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