Nursing Schools Go After Minorities and Men
New America Media, News report, Ketaki Gokhale, Posted: Feb 06, 2008
Editor's Note: For the last three years, community colleges in California’s Central Valley have been recruiting more Latino, Southeast Asian and male students for their nursing programs. As a result, enrollment went up by more than 60 percent,, reports NAM writer Ketaki Gokhale.
FRESNO, Calif. – The results of a three-year, $10 million initiative to ease the nursing shortage in California’s Central Valley by recruiting more Latino, Southeast Asian and male students to nursing programs have been released, and they’re heartening.
Community colleges in the area report that their overall nursing program enrollment has increased by more than 60 percent and minority enrollment is up by 13 percent, with Hispanic Americans entering the profession in greater numbers.
California has the most severe nursing shortage in the United States, a 2004 U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration report found. According to the report, the state has only 589 registered nurses per 100,000 residents, the lowest number in the nation. The national average is 825 registered nurses per 100,000 people.
Because nurses tend to stay in the area where they receive their training, the Nursing Diversity Initiative, funded by The California Endowment and evaluated by the UCSF Center for California Health Workforce Studies, has focused on boosting enrollment in six public nursing programs in the Central Valley’s Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties.
Combined, these counties in California’s agricultural corridor have only 497 registered nurses per 100,000 residents. In other words, the area faces one of the most severe nursing shortages in the country. Because of the Central Valley’s high poverty rates (caused, for the most part, by a large seasonal labor force) and its remote location, hospitals find it hard to attract and retain good nurses and doctors.
Marianne Spurgeon, an administrator at a small nursing program at Merced College, says that she saw modest increases in enrollment over the course of the initiative. “Our program was already pretty diverse,” she says. “We have a true melting pot in the Central Valley. Having the grant just enhanced an already diverse population.”
In spite of its small town feel, says Karen Roberts, a nursing division chair at a community college in Visalia, Calif., the Central Valley is a bastion of diversity, with a strong Hmong and Hispanic presence. “You especially need nurses that come from all these cultures and backgrounds,” she says.
The need for “culturally competent care” goes beyond the ability to communicate with patients in their native tongues. For example, she explains, trinkets and charms have great symbolic value in the Native American and Hmong cultures. “Nurses need to know not to discard those items,” she says.
Many nursing program administrators believe the nursing profession needs a PR boost. “To really get to all those kids in high school and young men, there’s a need to correct the perception of what a nurse really does,” Roberts says. “Johnson and Johnson did a great commercial campaign that shows it’s not about changing bedpans—it’s a technical, critical-thinking profession.”
Using the grants her college, College of the Sequoias, received from The California Endowment, Roberts managed to increase her enrollment from 50 to 80 students a semester. Between five and 10 percent of the student body was composed of underrepresented minorities before the initiative began. Now they make up 40 to 55 percent of the enrollees.
Boosting enrollment in nursing programs is only part of the solution to the Central Valley’s nursing shortage. Program administrators complain that there’s also a shortage of nursing faculty. Registered nurses can make more money working in a hospital three days a week than they would as college faculty. “It’s great to boost enrollment, but if we weren’t able to hire more faculty, if you don’t have the nurses to teach, you can’t accept the students,” Roberts explains. “So, really, there are two shortages—one of nurses, and another of master’s prepared faculty.”
The nursing shortage in Visalia is only going to worsen, Roberts says, as the town’s two major hospitals move to increase their number of beds, and a brand new hospital gets erected in the nearby town of Hanford.
Many program administrators said the improvements in enrollment might be hard to sustain without additional aid. Spurgeon says that Merced College has secured another grant that will allow them to continue recruiting underrepresented students.
Surveys of nursing students during the three-year evaluation period revealed that nursing doesn’t need to be “sold” to minority women as a desirable career path. It is seen largely as a fulfilling, well-paying and stable occupation. Nearly half of the male students surveyed, however, view nursing as “women’s work,” proving that there’s still much work to be done.
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