Student Demographics with Changing Admission Criteria: Is Nursing Diversity at Risk?

Schools of nursing are challenged with choosing from an increasing number of applicants and the need to prepare as many successful nurses as possible to meet the nursing shortage. Strategies have included increasing student enrollment, utilizing accelerated programs, and changing admission criteria. This study describes the demographic characteristics of three classes of nursing students admitted under different criteria to the same nursing school. The value of maintaining a high level of ethnic diversity is guided by Leininger\u27s theory of cultural care diversity and universality. Although changes occurred in the demographic constitution of each nursing class, ethnic diversity was maintained as admission criteria were made more stringent

Media, Public Storytelling and Social Justice: An Introduction to FOMACS, Forum on Migration and Communications

This case study, commissioned by Atlantic Philanthropies, presents snapshots of projects demonstrating how The Forum on Migration and Communications (FOMACS) strengthens the voices of migrants and NGOs who work in the migrant sector by using collaboration, creative arts, digital media and storytelling as catalysts for social change, advocacy and educational transformation

Synthesizing Middle Grades Research on Cultural Responsiveness: The Importance of a Shared Conceptual Framework

In conducting a literature review of 133 articles on cultural responsiveness in middle level education, we identified a lack of shared definitions, theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and foci, which made it impossible to synthesize across articles. Using a conceptual framework that required: 1) clear definitions of terms; 2) a critically conscious stance; and 3) inclusion of the middle school concept, we identified 14 articles that met these criteria. We then mapped differences and convergences across these studies, which allowed us to identify the conceptual gaps that the field must address in order to have common definitions and understandings that enable synthesis across studies

Barriers to Preoperative Teaching in a Culturally Diverse Healthcare Environment

The role of the professional nurse is integral in educating and ensuring that patients understand essential components of their plan of care. This is especially true for patients who are to undergo surgical interventions; evidence has demonstrated that preoperative education provided to patients is linked with positive patient outcomes and a decrease in post-operative complications (Blackstone, Garrett, & Hasselkus, 2011). This qualitative study investigated the barriers that nurses experience in providing preoperative education to diverse patients in a multicultural healthcare environment. Ten registered nurses at a private community hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area participated in an hour long one-on-one semi-structured interview over the course of six months to explore knowledge that nurses identify as important to teach patients before surgery, what they actually teach, and the barriers they experience in the delivery of this information. These interviews were coded using qualitative research software, and revealed challenges relating to language barriers, mistrust of translation services, and the perceived restrictions of time. The barriers resulted in sub-optimal delivery of preoperative information. Although nurses wanted to provide the best care they could, the barriers posed significant challenges. Consequently, nurses experienced moral distress under circumstances in which they are aware of the quality of the information they provide. The phenomenon of satisficing was identified as a coping strategy to the routine nursing practice of preoperative education

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of A Teaching Program on the Care Provided to Jewish Clients

The purpose of this qualitative evaluation study was to determine how an educational program provided to nursing students changed their perceptions of the care they provided to Jewish clients. A teaching program on Jewish beliefs and culture was given to ten baccalaureate nursing students who were providing care to Jewish older adults through one of the university\u27s Academic Nurse Managed Centers. The teaching program was given early in the semester and students were interviewed four and eight weeks later to determine how the teaching program influenced their interactions with clients. Three major themes emerged from the interview data: a) increased sensitivity and insight, b), establishment of rapport, c) individualization. All of the students felt that the educational program was relevant to their future careers as nurses

Why are Spiritual Aspects of Care so hard to Address in Nursing Education?’ A Literature Review (1993-2015)

Difficulties persist in conceptualising spiritual needs and understanding their relationship to religious needs and relevance to wellbeing. This review was undertaken to clarify some of these issues. It set out to establish what is already known about how issues of spiritual assessment and care are addressed in undergraduate nursing education. Using a systematic approach, a literature review covering the period 1993-2015 was undertaken. Reviewed materials were collected from mainly online sources including with searches conducted using CINHAL, SUMMON and PubMed databases, after defining keywords and inclusion and exclusion criteria. The study found that Spirituality appears to be a broad but useful category which is concerned with how people experience meaning and purpose in their lives. However, it also established that here are relatively few studies focused on how spiritual care competencies could be developed in nursing students. There is also little work exploring nursing educators’ perspectives and experiences about how to develop spiritual competencies in their students. The study concludes that further research is necessary in order to bridge the gap between aspirations and practice

Assessing Culture Competence Among Nurses in an Acute Care Setting

The aim of the study was to assess cultural competence among nurses in an acute care setting. A 25-item questionnaire developed by Campinha-Bacote (2003) titled Inventory to Assess Cultural Competence Among Health Care Providers (IAPCC-R) along with a demographic survey were utilized to assess cultural competence among 100 nurses in an acute care hospital. The results of the study indicated that 70% of nurses (n=63) were culturally aware and 30% (n=27) were culturally competent. There was no statistical significance between the level of cultural competence and years of experience, educational degree or self rating of \u27being culturally competent\u27. The findings of the study provide direction to strengthen cultural competence education and training among nurses and strategies to enhance the structure and processes of organization\u27s efforts to deal with diversity

From Ethnocentrism to Transculturalism: A Film Studies Pedagogical Journey

 This study reviews the exploratory implementation of an ‘internationalising the curriculum’ policy in relation to a cultural studies unit within a Creative Industries Faculty at an Australian university. Charting certain pedagogical practices in the delivery of transnational film studies, this case study involves a critical, contextual examination of student feedback as well as current theories about transcultural curricula in general and film studies curricula in particular. The study shows that tertiary students can be provided with an extraordinarily rich range of differing, sometimes conflicting, but always engaging transcultural insights and understandings.  It is further argued that transnational competencies may be developed and enabled through the innovative realisation of a type of ‘border crossing’ pedagogical model, largely by foregrounding transcultural ‘affective’ issues around social justice

Reciprocity in global mental health policy

In an attempt to address inequalities and inequities in mental health provision in low and middle-income countries the WHO commenced the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) in 2008. Four years on from the commencement of this programme of work, the WHO has recently adopted the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020. This article will critically appraise the strategic direction that the WHO has adopted to address mental health difficulties across the globe. This will include a consideration of the role that the biomedical model of mental health difficulties has had on global strategy. Concerns will be raised that an over-reliance on scaling up medical resources has led to a strengthening of psychiatric hospital-based care, and insufficient emphasis being placed on social and cultural determinants of human distress. We also argue that consensus scientific opinion garnered from consortia of psychiatric ‘experts’ drawn mainly from Europe and North America may not have universal relevance or applicability, and may have served to silence and subjugate local experience and expertise across the globe. In light of the criticisms that have been made of the research that has been conducted into understanding mental health problems in the global south, the article also explores ways in which the evidence-base can be made more relevant and more valid. An important issue that will be highlighted is the apparent lack of reciprocity that exists in the impetus for change in how mental health problems are understood and addressed in low and middle-income countries compared to high-income countries. Whereas there is much focus on the need for change in low and middle-income countries, there is comparatively little critical reflection on practices in high-income countries in the global mental health discourse. We advocate for the development of mental health services that are sensitive to the socio-cultural context in which the services are applied. Despite the appeal of global strategies to promote mental health, it may be that very local solutions are required. The article concludes with some reflections on the strategic objectives identified in the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020 and how this work can be progressed in the future

Trans-Cultural Journeys of East-Asian Educators: The Impact of the Three Teachings

This paper presents the joint journeys, from the East to the West, of three emerging educators, who reflect on their lived experiences in an Asian educational context and their shaped identities through a connection between the motherland and the places to which they immigrated. They have grounded their identities in the inequities they experienced in Asian education and described their experiences through a cultural and social lens as Asian teachers studying in Canadian institutions. They story their lived experiences by using a Photo-voice research method to elicit the narratives of their East-to-West transcultural journeys. The major finding is the reconstructed identity of each of the researchers. The data collected through ‘Photo-voice’ sheds light on the influence on teachers’ mindset of the Three Teachings or Religions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism — across Asia on teachers' mindset, which are seen to cause inequities among the marginalized. The purpose of this research is an attempt by the authors, who have immersed themselves in each other’s journeys, to discuss how they have reformed their educator identities in a Canadian educational context in which equity, diversity, and inclusion are acknowledged