“Diversifying the nursing workforce is essential to meeting the nation’s healthcare needs, addressing health inequities in historically underserved communities, and promoting greater access to care.”
- Dr. Deborah Trautman, American Association of Colleges of Nursing President and Chief Executive Officer
There’s no denying that putting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives into action is central to the future of healthcare. Diversifying the nursing workforce is a crucial action step. When nurses can connect with an array of diverse cultures and patient communities, they can engage patients more easily and authentically. In turn, their patients will likely feel more at ease and trust the care they’re receiving.
At CareRev, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are part of our core values. We uplift them across our organization and across our place within the healthcare community. Let’s dive into 5 action ideas your healthcare facility can put in place today to improve nurses’ DEIB experiences.
Growing diversity
Connect with your nurses as well as your facilities’ patient communities. This can include (but is not limited to) getting to know more about their ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, cultures, genders, religious beliefs, and socioeconomic statuses.
Attracting, hiring, and retaining nurses who are representative of your patient communities is a vital way to forge and maintain community connections.
Ensuring equity
Provide nurses at your facilities with the tools and support they need. In turn, support them as they provide what patients need, as they are “well positioned to play a major role in addressing the underlying causes of poor health by understanding and recognizing the wide range of factors that influence how well and long people live, helping to create individual- and community-targeted solutions.”
Remember: nurses are powerful health equity ambassadors.
Advocating for inclusion
Create and encourage the use of avenues for both your facility’s nurses as well as your patients to share their voices. When your facility addresses social needs across the health system, it “can improve health equity from the individual to the system level.”
From the frontline of patient care, nurses can foster inclusion and shape how cultural health is considered within your facility.
Fostering intersectional belonging
Cultivate a strong understanding of the B in DEIB. Research shows that our need to belong at work is almost as important as the need to belong in our own homes.
When your facility’s nurses feel that sense of belonging, they get to experience being accepted - and included - fully for who they are. Intersectional belonging means considering different facets of nurses’ identities and how they can overlap and impact their lives at work. Prioritizing that means paving the way for more authentic connections and strategic teamwork. It may also serve as a crucial effort to prevent bullying within the nursing profession.
Measuring DEIB efforts
Start by taking an in-depth look at your facility’s current DEIB initiatives. What actions have been taken for each of the letters? What actions have been taken in the last year? The last 6 months? Surveys from nurses and patients can give you more insight. Create an atmosphere that welcomes honest answers.
From there, determine which metrics will be most helpful as you assess your initiatives' impact moving forward. Integrate examination of these metrics across your facility to advance acceptance of DEIB as a business focus. Collaborating cross-functionally will help to build more accurate insights and allow teams to create their own processes, contribute their own goals, and track their own successes and areas for improvement. Securing leadership buy-in will help to encourage teams to actively participate.
Now that you have the first steps to bring DEIB strategies to life at your facility, reach out to us here at CareRev. We know that putting DEIB at the center of recruiting and onboarding is vital to creating environments where we can all thrive. We are committed to consistently improving our candidate experience with each letter of DEIB in mind.
Our cloud-based platform empowers nurses to take command of their careers while providing your facility with local untapped talent to meet its fluctuating patient demand. By combining the right DEIB initiatives and the ability to engage professionals from within your local community via CareRev, your facility can help build a more diverse workforce and inclusive culture.
