Article
Nursing’s Leaky Pipeline: Barriers to a Diverse Nursing Workforce
Journal of Professional Nursing
(2021)
Abstract
Nursing educational programs have been charged with increasing the diversity of the nursing
workforce; however, this depends on having a diverse and qualified applicant pool to select from.
Purpose: To determine the effects of student losses over time on nursing program diversity.
Design and methods: Descriptive longitudinal study. Progression of all students from a single university enrolled as
pre-nursing majors from 2012 to 2016 (N = 2498) was tracked over seven key checkpoints during a seven-year
time period.
Results: Slightly more than half of the students (57%) were lost prior to nursing program application, which
occurred at the end of the sophomore year. Losses were higher for minority students (70%), those requiring
remedial coursework (65%), and first-generation students (62%). Older students, those with a prior degree, and
those who started in another major were more likely to persist through some, but not all, of the checkpoints.
Conclusions: Pre-nursing program losses significantly decreased the diversity of the remaining nursing applicant
pool, particularly for African American students. Losses were highest during the freshman level Anatomy and
Physiology course. Nursing education programs need to develop early intervention programs to support diverse
students during the critical pre-nursing period to increase the diversity of the nursing workforce.
Keywords
- Workforce diversity,
- Pre-nursing,
- BSN student success,
- Holistic admissions
Disciplines
Publication Date
2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2020.05.002
Citation Information
Mary P Bennett, Sherry Lovan, Marian Smith and Chandra Ellis-Griffith. "Nursing’s Leaky Pipeline: Barriers to a Diverse Nursing Workforce" Journal of Professional Nursing Vol. 37 (2021) p. 441 - 450 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mary_bennett/25/