Pediatricians and Pediatric Nurses in the Delivery of Culturally Competent Care: A Scoping Literature Review to Investigate Progress and Issues around Culturally Diverse Care in Pediatrics.
The demographics in the United States are rapidly changing. In 2012, 47.2% of the children who lived in the United Stated were of color. However, three out of four physicians identified themselves as White non-Hispanic and approximately 83% of nurses are White, non Hispanic. In 2005, The Office of Minority Health reported that the main ingredient in closing the gap in health care disparities is cultural competency.
The studies in the review revealed that the delivery of culturally competent care by pediatric health care providers has been a slow and difficult process and that there are identified areas of improvement.
While the demographics of the population in the United States are rapidly changing, the demographics of nurses and physicians do not reflect this rapid change. Findings from the
“2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses”3 reported that the population of nurses from minority racial/ethnic groups has increased by 54% between 2000 and 2008. However, even
with the 54% increase, minority racial and ethnic nurses only comprised 16.8% of the total nurse population in the United States. An overall, 83.2% of nurses reported being White, non-Hispanic, an indication that nurse represented a primarily homogeneous workforce
Public school nurses in Alabama reported on the communication challenges they faced with their growing English-asa-Second-Language (ESL) student population.15 A third of the nurse respondents reported difficulty communicating with the students while over half reported difficulty communicating with parents of the students.
Pediatr Neonatal Nurs Open J. 2014; 1(1): 19-25. doi: 10.17140/PNNOJ-1-105
