Student and Faculty Perceptions of Nursing Education Culture and its Impact on Minority
Students
Increasing the number of minority nurses can help address the nursing shortage and nursing’s
failure to reflect the nations’ growing ethnic and racial diversity. Despite efforts over many
years, minority nursing students remain underrepresented, have more academic difficulty and
higher attrition rates. It may be helpful to investigate this problem from another viewpoint—that
of cultural fit. Student retention theory blended with culture theory offers a conceptual
framework suggesting that schools’ climates and cultures affect students’ academic performance.
The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to investigate minority persistence in
nursing education from a cultural viewpoint, looking at the impact of higher education and
nursing education culture and role of nursing faculty. Twenty-nine white and African-American
prelicensure nursing students and 14 faculty participated in focus group and individual
interviews. Open coding and cross-case comparisons (by role, race, and geographic location)
resulted in formulation of a concept map describing the nursing student experience.
Key findings were:
 universal perception of struggle in nursing education
 pervasive and negative impact of racial prejudice on black students’ experience
 positive impact of welcoming actions and negative impact of unwelcoming actions by
faculty, students and administrators on student success
 need for welcoming by all three groups in the nursing program
 conflict between nursing education’s values and norms or typical behaviors of nurse
educators
 key role of fellow students and faculty in influencing minority student success
The study indicates that nursing education culture influences students’ success. Students connect
with nursing values and find value-driven actions welcoming while norm-driven actions create
barriers. Implications for administrators include maintaining program emphasis on nursing
values, creating a “Culture of comfort” through transition and support programs, and socializing
all students into nursing values. Faculty implications include increased awareness of actions and
importance of modelling values.