Nursing School Addresses "White European" Nursing Culture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Look around any hospital, clinic or doctor's office and most of the nurses you see will not be people of color.

This situation does not bode well for the future of nursing or for health care, as the general population becomes more diverse and the need for multicultural understanding more crucial.

Providing that understanding is the goal of a new curriculum in the master's-degree program for family nurse practitioners in the University at Buffalo School of Nursing. The new curriculum will focus on the health beliefs and attitudes of other cultures, both in the classroom and in the field. A second major thrust is recruiting and retaining students from minority and underserved populations.

If the three-year effort is successful, UB's cultural-competency curriculum and field experiences may serve as a model for nursing schools around the country, says Nancy Campbell-Heider, Ph.D., UB professor of nursing and project director. The project is being funded by a $1.3 million grant from the federal Bureau of Professions, Health Resources and Services Administration.

"The majority of nurses are still of white European ancestry," said Campbell-Heider, "but their patients come from many cultures. If they are going to provide the best possible care, they need to know how other cultures understand and interpret illness and disease. And in the long term, we need to bring more people from diverse cultures into the profession."

"Meanwhile, until we succeed in our mission of creating a culturally diverse nursing work force, improving the cultural knowledge and sensitivity of our current students will help bridge the cultural divide."

Campbell-Heider and colleagues aim to accomplish five objectives:

o Prepare all family nurse practitioner graduates in cultural competency

o Increase the number of family nurse practitioners working in underserved areas by 10 percent

o Increase the number of students from minority and underserved groups enrolled in the nursing school by 10 percent

o Improve adolescent self-care skills, attitudes and behavior and increase nurses' teaching competency

o Create a positive image of nursing in the community

All students in the program will study cultural differences and identify false thinking about cultural stereotypes, and spend nearly 600 hours working in clinics in culturally diverse and underserved areas.

Campbell-Heider said that placing nursing students in underserved areas provides positive role models for recruiting minority nursing students, in addition to giving them first-hand experience working with different cultures.

One aspect of the grant specifically targets adolescent health. Family nurse practitioner students will teach ninth graders in schools with a mix of cultures about high-risk health behaviors. This fieldwork is designed to increase students' and parents' knowledge about risky behaviors while helping students learn to teach in community-based settings, said Campbell-Heider.

Another component involves producing educational health programs for broadcast over the Western New York Distance Learning Fiber Optic Network. This system connects most area public schools with UB's videoconferencing center developed by the School of Nursing and UB's Millard Fillmore College Continuing Education Division.