Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The Impact Of Health Promotion For Minority Nurses And Students

By Linda Stewart


A group of the population that goes against the majority is known as a minority. Such can be grouped in terms of culture, religion, sexual orientation to name but a few. The demand by health institutions and hospitals to take in diverse nursing students is rising by the day. Nurses from similar minority cultures as the patients are able to establish and maintain strong patient-client relationships with their clients. Minority populations continue to grow in most of the countries due to immigration and intermarriage with locals. This article highlights more 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.

Minorities who wish to practice holistic medicine from underrepresented communities are highly welcomed by nursing schools. These schools hence encourage a lot of minority applicants to apply more than the applicants from the majorities. Health campaigns work to encourage applications from such individuals to their institutions of choice.

Affirmative action has gone a long way in helping minorities secure learning positions in top-notch institutions. However, the policies have not come up without contradictions from courts and other interested parties. Considering race as one of the factors during admission of learners has been objected as racism admission slots should only be given on the basis of merit. Diverse classrooms should also be considered as being crucial to the system regardless of how 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.

The challenges facing minorities do not go away even with gaining support in order to join their institutions of choice. Being with majority students makes them face bias in matters like academic skills, perceptions relating to their abilities, limited peer support and even insufficient role models from the faculty.

Students from underrepresented backgrounds tend to be affected by a selective admission process which also in some cases serves them right. Academic profiling may, however, leave out some minorities as most of them struggle with being the first in their families to attend higher learning. The pressure on such learners is overwhelming as they deal with having to be the saviors of their families.

Health promotions require being done at every level in the health industry, from schools to workplaces in order to encourage diversification of the nursing workforce that will be able to cater for the growing needs of the people. Although minorities may have difficulty adjusting at first, their impact cannot be overlooked.




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