Racial and ethnic minorities make up approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population, but just under 15 percent of registered nurses, and just seven percent of RNs are men. It is essential for the Future of Nursing that the nursing population evolves to reflect Rhode Island’s changing population.
Researchers have long recognized the connection between a culturally diverse workforce and quality patient care. The ability of providers to communicate effectively with patients and to understand their cultural backgrounds is important to patient care. Our work on diversity is focused on supporting the importance of a diverse workforce and helping to prepare the discipline of nursing to care for a substantially increasing diverse population—ultimately to help narrow the health care disparities gap. The campaign established a diversity steering committee to guide our work to create a nursing profession prepared to care for a diverse population and, ultimately, to shape the transformation of the health care delivery system.
The overarching goal of the RIAC is to diversify the nursing workforce so that it more accurately reflects Rhode Island’s changing demographics, and contributes to the reduction of healthcare disparities. To that end, the Campaign seeks to be all inclusive; we view diversity as a matter of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location e.g. rural.