The Impact of Patient-Physician Racial and Gender Concordance on Patient Satisfaction with Outpatient Clinic Visits

Cultural Humility in Nursing: A Concept Analysis

BACKGROUND

The ability of nurses to deliver culturally mindful health care may be vital to improving the patient-clinician relationship and subsequent health outcomes for marginalized populations. Continuing education in cultural training should be designed to enhance a nurse's cultural humility.

METHOD

This study explores the concept of nurse cultural humility using the methods outlined by Walker and Avant (2018): define the attributes, offer a model case exemplifying the attributes, discuss the antecedents and consequences, and determine empirical referents.

RESULTS

The defining attributes of cultural humility in nursing are a lifelong process of reflexivity, an understanding and appreciation that the cultural backgrounds of both nurse and patient influence health care encounters, and a commitment to redress and mitigate power imbalances in the patient-clinician relationship.

CONCLUSION

By clearly defining nurse cultural humility, leaders will be able to develop cultural training interventions to enhance nurse cultural humility and measure the concept accurately. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 202x;5x(x):xx-xx.].

Perceived Success After Participation in the Summer Health Professions Education Program

Importance

The number of active health care professionals has not kept pace with the increasing number of minoritized individuals in the US. The Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) was developed to alleviate this underrepresentation in the health workforce.

Objective

To evaluate students' changes in perceived barriers and motivators for entering and succeeding in professional school after SHPEP participation.

Design, Setting, and Participants

For this cohort study, anonymous electronic surveys were sent to the 2017 to 2021 SHPEP participants at an academic health center at a large university in the southern US. Participants were first- and second-year undergraduates interested in the health professions and enrolled in the SHPEP. Program participants were invited to complete the study.

Exposures

An anonymous electronic survey was administered before and immediately after program completion.

Main Outcomes and Measures

The SHPEP Career Barriers Survey (SCBS) is composed of 22 questions on motivators and 20 questions on barriers to entering and succeeding in health professional school. Students responded using a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 indicating strongly disagree and 5 indicating strongly agree. Mixed analysis of variance was used to analyze the program's latent factors.

Results

Of all 402 SHPEP participants (mean [SD] age, 19.32 [0.88] years) from 2017 to 2021, 325 completed the preprogram survey and 259 also completed the postprogram survey. Of the 325 initial participants, 4 identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander (1.2%); 12 as Asian (3.7%); 188 as Black (57.8%); 95 as Hispanic or Latino (29.2%); 7 as White (2.2%); and 16 as multiracial (4.9%). Two hundred twelve participants were female (65.2%), and 226 were first-generation college students (69.5%). Results of the SCBS indicate that the SHPEP had a significant small to moderate association on perceived motivators (mean [SD] x̅ = 84.60 [9.67] vs 80.95 [8.93]; P = .001) and decreases in perceived barriers (mean [SD] x̅ = 48.02 [13.20] vs 51.72 [11.39]; P = .008). There was no significant difference in program success between studied years.

Conclusions and Relevance

In this cohort study, the SHPEP appeared to provide essential support for underrepresented students as measured by improved perceived motivators and reduced perceived barriers to entering professional education. Knowledge from this study can assist educators and health care professionals who wish to implement similar enrichment programs.