Perceived Barriers to Success for Minority Nursing Students: An Integrative Review

The objective of this paper was to identify barriers to successful program completion faced by underrepresented minority nursing students. This paper reveals that minority nursing student’s face multiple barriers to success including lack of financial support, inadequate emotional and moral support, as well as insufficient academic advising, program mentoring, technical support, and professional socialization. An additional theme—a resolve to succeed in spite of the identified barriers—was identified. This body of literature focuses solely on successful minority students’ experiences, revealing a significant gap in the research. The findings of this paper highlight the need to create and maintain nursing programs capable of aggressively supporting minority student needs. Recommendations for future research are included. 1. Introduction The increasing diversity of the United States is evidenced by a recent census report predicting that by midcentury, racial and ethnic minorities will make up over half of the United States’ population [1]. A culturally diverse nursing workforce is critically needed to meet the healthcare needs of this increasingly diverse population. Recruiting and retaining underrepresented minority (URM) nursing students continues to be an important component of this process but remains a challenge for the nursing education community. National nursing and healthcare organizations including the National League for Nursing (NLN), the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the American Nurses Association (ANA) agree that increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of students in US nursing programs is a high priority [2–5]. By increasing recruitment and improving retention and graduation rates of minority nursing students, nursing programs could facilitate increased minority representation in the nursing workforce. 2. Background and Significance Registered nurses represent the largest number of professional healthcare workers in the United States. However, the racial and ethnic background of the nursing workforce is not reflective of the general population as a whole. Like other healthcare professions, minority representation in nursing is lagging [4]. Initial findings from the 2008 Sample Survey of Registered Nurses report that although the minority population constitutes 37 percent of the country’s population, minority nurses make up only 16.8 percent of the total nurse population [6]. In addition to being the largest group of healthcare providers, nurses work in virtually all healthcare