The 'black nurse': Ever an endangered species?

Abstract

In the late 1980s it was feared that black nurses in Britain were a dying species. There was a belief that young people of minority ethnic descent were being deterred from choosing nursing as a career owing to the discrimination, disadvantage and harassment experienced by their parents as health service workers. The demise of the black nurse by the year 2000 was even predicted unless remedial recruitment initiatives were taken. Anecdotal evidence and limited statistical evidence suggested that the number of black applicants to pre-registration training in nursing and midwifery was lower than would be expected when compared with the representation of the minority ethnic groups in the population as a whole. Nevertheless, the evidential base has, to date, been limited. Using the most comprehensive data set available to date, this paper presents an analysis of the national pattern of applications from members of minority ethnic groups to pre-registration nursing and midwifery training, which indicates rather more complex patterns of under- and, in some cases, over-representation of the black and Asian minority ethnic groups.