Initiatives aimed at retaining ethnically diverse student nurses on undergraduate programmes: An integrative review
Siobhan Tranter
NMIT, New Zealand
: J Nurs Patient Care
Abstract
This paper presents an integrative review of the literature focusing on the reasons why ethnically diverse undergraduate student nurses leave the profession before graduating. There is a well-documented concern about the global chronic shortage of nurses. In 2016, the Centre for Workforce Intelligence predicted the NHS in the UK is likely to have 24,500 fewer nurses than it needs. Similar predictions have emerged from the US with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) reporting that nursing school enrolment is not growing fast enough to meet demand. Coupled with this, is the strive towards creating a linguistically and culturally diverse workforce that can provide more culturally appropriate health care. Whether this is in response to, addressing the disparities of health in indigenous populations (Maori and aboriginal) or acknowledgment of growing migrant populations within existing communities (Hispanic populations in the US). Thus we interrogated the evidence to establish the success of initiatives focused on retention of ethnically diverse nursing students. Databases were searched using key terms to identify papers that were both relevant and rigorous. The CASP (CASP 2009) tool was used to critically evaluate the relevant literature. The appraisal process yielded 18 papers that were included in the review. The four main themes that emerged from the review were: 1. Prediction, 2. Recruitment and retention, 3. Multi-faceted approaches once on the programme, 4. Single facet approach once on the programme. The studies reviewed, used a wide variety of incentives and methodologies. Although there are some positive outcomes from several of the initiatives it seems the issues of retention for this group of student nurses are complex and multi-faceted. Given the global nature of this issue it would seem that a more robust, large scale research is required to further investigate the initiatives.
Biography
Siobhan Tranter is a Lecturer on a Bachelor of Nursing program who has recently moved to New Zealand who has experience in research and writing papers. She worked as part of the ‘Service user perspectives and experiences research’ cluster within the School of Health in Bangor University, UK. She has research interests in a wide variety of health care issues: improving the physical health of people with serious mental illness, cultural and language awareness in health care, nurse education and her current focus is on attrition and retention of undergraduate nursing students. This paper focuses on one element of this concept.
