Nursing Workforce Diversity
Nursing Workforce Diversity
Nursing workforce diversity is a thread that runs throughout the IOM Report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, and through the work of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. The Louisiana Action Coalition has made nursing workforce diversity a key priority and is actively working to advance diversity through various initiatives.
In 2015, LAC held a Diversity Think Tank during which more than 80 thought leaders from across Louisiana came together to discuss existing barriers to achieving diversity in the state’s nursing workforce and ways to remove those barriers and work to recruit a more diverse population of nursing students and advance diverse nurse leaders. Find below links to the Think Tank summary report and accompanying infographic.
Based on recommendations from the Think Tank, five of LAC’s regional coalitions developed and executed projects to advance nursing workforce diversity. Summaries of those projects can be found by clicking the link below.
To reach out to the Hispanic community, a nine-month pilot project pairing Hispanic high school students and Hispanic nurses in a mentoring and educational experience was held in the New Orleans area in 2016. The project’s purpose was to determine if a mentoring relationship between Hispanic high school students and Hispanic registered nurses is an effective strategy to entice students to consider nursing as a profession post high school. The project is being evaluated for consideration of continuation. Read about the project.
In another effort to further nursing workforce diversity, LAC received funding from the Louisiana Health Works Commission and worked with the state’s nurse practitioner programs to offer financial assistance to minority registered nurses pursuing a graduate degree as a primary care family nurse practitioner. The recipients received tuition reimbursement for all or a portion of their tuition and committed to work in medically underserved or health professional shortage areas for at least six months after graduation. A total of 17 nurses -15 females and two males - received assistance between the fall semester of 2014 and spring semester of 2016.
LAC’s Diversity Steering Committee is working with the Louisiana Board of Regents and the state’s nursing programs’ deans and directors on a protocol for tracking minority and male students enrolled in Louisiana’s pre-RN and APRN programs. Tracking attrition and graduation rates of this group of students will help nursing programs better understand the factors that contribute to successful completion of their programs.