Essentials About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Nursing

This nursing handbook introduces and defines key terms about race and racism for nurses, nursing students, and nurse educators. It addresses how race and racism act as structural and core social determinants of health and propel health inequities. It moves beyond a focus on multicultural approaches for understanding inequity toward a recognition of the broader impact that both systemic and structural racism have had on inequality in health and life opportunities. Through a social justice lens, the book underscores how nurses, as frontline health professionals, need to understand racism as a factor behind these inequities and its significance to their working environment and nursing practice. In concise chapters with brief paragraphs and bulleted information, this practical handbook offers strategies for how to productively engage in a dialogue about race and racism. It considers the history of racism in the United States and then breaks down how it operates at structural, institutional, and individual levels. Case studies illustrate such concepts as microaggressions, implicit bias, power, privilege, and intersectionality in order to foster understanding and provide opportunities for both self-reflection and collective conversation.