NURS1103 Clinical Nursing Practice I

Racism

Racism is basically an approach of systematic subjugation on a specific social group by a more powerful social group (Forrest, Lean & Dunn, 2016). The oppressor group demands to conquer social, political as well as economic benefit over the less powerful group in the society (Grosfoguel, 2016). Influence of racism negatively affects almost all professions and in case of nursing, the reflection of racism can be found in a broad way. It is obvious that, the indigenous Australians are one of the most vulnerable as well as marginalised population in the world (West, Foster, Stewart & Usher, 2016).

Reflection of racism in nursing practice

Racism is present in the nursing practice from the very beginning of their career, and they face the racial discrimination even from when they were student to their work life also. Among the nursing students, an experience of classroom racism is found in the form of bullying, passing some irritating comments on race etc. Racism is a very sensitive issue which evokes blame, incurs feeling of guilt or anger among the students as well as the lecturers and it often affects the emotion of the oppressed group of society who are the victims of racism (Cox, 2016). In order to address racism in nursing practices, it is very much essential to improve the cultural competence among them. Cultural competence is an essential attribute in the nursing graduates. Again, in the workplace, nurses need to deal with various patients who come from various cultural groups and while dealing with them many times, nurses have faced issues related to racism. It is considered that patients are the primary offenders and if the nurses who are taking care of them, are not from their preferable racial groups, they protest and even they can hurt or confuse the nurse in their work (Cox, 2016). Due to this discrimination, nurses get confused and they find it difficult to cope up with. Some studies revealed that, nurses from Hispanic and other communities are not overlooked for promotions due to their race. Even, co-workers as well as doctors may use put-downs by motivated racially and bullying comments due to racism are very common in nursing practices. In order to motivate aboriginal people in getting involved with healthcare profession, a number of initiatives have been taken in the past few years. In the year 2006, in Canada, the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, ANAC met the nurses and all other stakeholders associated with the healthcare profession to discuss the way of recruitment of aboriginal nurses and the essential tools required to provide them a culturally safe environment while working in their workplaces (Hilario, Browne & McFadden, 2018). Several studies have also organized in order to examine the experiences of minority and aboriginal nurses in their workplace and the faculty members are also interviewed many times to explore the factors related to racism in their classrooms. In Australia, some nurses and midwives also seek for cultural safety while working in the hospitals or in the healthcare organizations and even some aboriginals also are getting afraid of choosing healthcare as their profession due to the existence of massive racial discrimination in the workplace as well as in the learning centres (Birks, Budden, Biedermann, Park & Chapman, 2018).

References

Birks, M., Budden, L. M., Biedermann, N., Park, T., & Chapman, Y. (2018). A ‘rite of passage?’: Bullying experiences of nursing students in Australia. Collegian, 25(1), 45-50.

Cox, L. G. (2016). Social change and social justice: cultural safety as a vehicle for nurse activism, presented at 2nd International Critical Perspectives in Nursing and Healthcare, Sydney Nursing School, Sydney Australia. October 31st-November 2nd.

Forrest, J., Lean, G., & Dunn, K. (2016). Challenging racism through schools: teacher attitudes to cultural diversity and multicultural education in Sydney, Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(3), 618-638.

Grosfoguel, R. (2016). What is racism?. Journal of World-Systems Research, 22(1), 9-15.

Hilario, C. T., Browne, A. J., & McFadden, A. (2018). The influence of democratic racism in nursing inquiry. Nursing inquiry, 25(1), e12213.

West, R., Foster, K., Stewart, L., & Usher, K. (2016). Creating walking tracks to success: A narrative analysis of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nursing students’ stories of success. Collegian, 23(4), 349-354.