Recently, health care professionals are confronted with a consumer population and a set of professional values that require special skills for negotiating cultural difference. Globalisation and the changing demographics of contemporary society call for a diverse health professionals’ workforce to provide a high quality of care for all consumers. Consequently, there is a growing interest in understanding the issues of diversity and social inclusion within the health professions and in programs designed to promote culturally relevant services. Sustained efforts in this area should include an understanding of minority people already working in the system. This paper will discuss the findings of a qualitative study that used grounded theory method to explicate the worklives of twenty Black nurses within the health care system in a Canadian province. The narratives of these Black nurses revealed several issues that influence their quality of worklife including issues of diversity such as diversity a within the workforce, educational curricula, professional literature, work environments and the actual services delivered by health care professionals. In addition, the lack of cultural diversity in leadership positions in the health professions including nursing was perceived as a contributor to poor quality of worklife for minority populations. The paper will conclude with a discussion of how the study’s findings can inform the process of creating and supporting effective cross-cultural interactions in today’s culturally diverse organizations and communities.
|Keywords:||Cultural Diversity, Black Canadians, Health Care, Nurses, Worklife|
Associate Professor, School Of Nursing, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
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