America is more varied than ever. As cultural heterogeneity grows in America, religion, faith, and health habits show their effects. However, Latinx and African-American nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals must represent the exponential expansion in population diversity. Black nurses may not reflect the variety of the U.S. population, but they are essential for culturally competent treatment and trust-building with communities of color. Many individuals believe health inequalities are caused by fundamental differences between populations and ignore their societal factors. Healthcare workers of color realize that social and political systems cause health inequities. We can then find structural gaps-closing solutions. Intervention research in an organizational case study addresses several of these complicated concerns. This chapter points to the critical importance of leadership, cultural change, employee engagement, and cultural change as essential for organizations to transform to make them more diverse and inclusive.
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A nurse's role is to provide optimal care for the patient, especially post-surgery (Borgés et al., 2018). Nurses are integral to the healthcare system and must be treated because patients and other healthcare workers rely on their expertise, experience, and knowledge day and night.
Nurses comprise the most extensive section of the healthcare field, with a total of 3.9 million nurses in the United States (Haddad et al., 2020). A nursing shortage is no surprise because the Baby Boomer Generation is entering an age with increased health services. This generation is the largest population over 65 in the U.S. than at any other time in history. The population is aging, and the nursing workforce is also aging. Approximately one million nurses are over 50, hinting at retirement in the next ten to fifteen years (Haddad et al., 2020). Some regions in the U.S. have a surplus of nurses, whereas some struggle to fulfill the region's needs.
This hospital is in an area with a shortage of nurses and a need for more representation of diverse ethnicities. This is no surprise considering that 83.2% of the nursing population was white in 2008, with only 5.6% African American and 3.6% Hispanic (Moore & Continelli, 2016). These rates could discourage minorities from pursuing a nursing career, so change needs to be effective as soon as possible to increase racial/ethnic diversity while simultaneously decreasing the nursing shortage.
Job dissatisfaction, workplace anxiety, and employment disengagement are underlying problems that can hinder the nurses' performance, creating a harsh environment for the patients and other healthcare workers. Nearly 60% of nurses are dissatisfied not only with their healthcare benefits but also with their retirement benefits. The level of satisfaction was even worse in hospitals with poor environments (McHugh et al., 2011). Workplace anxiety is among the highest productivity-related costs of all chronic illnesses and depression (Ivandic et al., 2017).
According to Jeve et al. (2015), employees in healthcare were less likely to make mistakes when they were more engaged. The stress and pressures of being understaffed leave the nurses focusing more attention on individual needs than supplying optimum care to the patient. This level of employee disengagement then affects the patient's experience in the hospital. These patients are then less likely to refer to this hospital to their family and friends (McHugh et al., 2011). By not taking care of the nurses, the hospital's overall business struggles because patients might choose another hospital to receive their care.
According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, four factors must be met before someone can achieve self-actualization. Self-actualization is the “desire to become everything that one is capable of being” (Henwood et al., 2015). These four factors include physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, and esteem. Therefore, these nurses must feel cared for to showcase their full potential. This falls under the love and belonging category of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so the consultant's goal is to increase job satisfaction and employee engagement while lowering workplace anxiety.
Minorities even have a more challenging time fulfilling their full potential because, according to Lakshmi Nair and Oluwaseun Adetayo (2019), 98% of senior management in healthcare organizations are white, with a large majority being male. This provides almost a glass ceiling effect for women and minorities. The glass ceiling effect is when men come to work in a mainly female environment but have higher chances of rising quicker through management levels than their female counterparts (Johns, 2013).