by Associate Dean Mary Lynn Davis-Ajami IUSON Bloomington

Recent national events remind us that complacency about the insidious effects of racism on our society is no longer an option. Protest movements, national dialogue, and historic events – often in full view and captured by the citizenry via cell phones in our magnificent cities, small towns, and rural areas – speak to a renewed visibility of injustice and a desire to effect fundamental change. The recent passing of George Floyd and many other untimely deaths, juxtaposed to the recent passing of Civil Rights icons, suggest we have many miles left on our journey towards equal opportunity. 

In response to heightened calls for transformation, the IU School of Nursing’s Diversity Committee is hard at work developing a long-term strategic plan designed to address the diversity of the students we graduate, the faculty we hire, and the programs we offer. As this work continues, I wanted to take a few moments to express my thoughts about why these changes are so essential to our future and the nearly endless possibilities they offer for our school.

In the long-term, we are committed to developing an inclusive, safe, and supportive educational culture where everyone – students, faculty, and staff – sees one another as whole persons and not simply as one-dimensional and often stereotypical aspects of our being. For nurses, diverse patients and the health care workforce include an almost infinite number of attributes such as age, cognitive style, culture, ethnicity, gender identity, personal interests, race, religion, sexual orientation, skills and potential, socio-economic status, what we have experienced, where we are from, and much more.

Creating such an educational culture will have a profound impact on the patients we serve, on the nurses we graduate, and on the faculty we recruit and hire.

• As nurses, we can only do what our patients trust us to do. A more diverse health care workforce builds that trust by providing greater comfort and familiarity for the patient when discussing and caring for their health care needs. This may be especially true of older patients of color and LGBTQ patients who, remembering the stigmas they grew up with, are reluctant to discuss sensitive issues with their health care provider for fear of being ridiculed or judged. Culturally-guided interactions will also promote greater compliance when receiving care by connecting our minority nurses with their patients on a far more personal level.
• In addition, a more diverse faculty will help build stronger teacher/student relationships, enhancing the quality of instruction we provide. It will also help our students to function more effectively as members of health care teams by offering them a safe haven in which to examine their own biases and to develop coping strategies for those times when they must deal with a difficult, uncooperative, or abusive patient. We also realize that certain health care conditions are more prevalent in our underserved communities. We want to give our students working in these communities the tools they need to quickly recognize, properly diagnose, and effectively treat these conditions, helping to reduce or eliminate health care disparities.
• A more diverse faculty will also open up new avenues of exploration for research, new sources of funding for that research, and new opportunities for disseminating the results – making our research portfolio even more robust and impactful than it already is.

But there is another far more important first step we will take during this next academic year. 

Through town halls, surveys, private and in-class conversations, and other forms of communication, we will actively listen to our students, faculty, and constituents, especially those from our underserved communities. Our goal here is to develop true empathy: to see the world as through their eyes and to experience their feelings as if they were our own. Pursuing this goal will undoubtedly lead us to having some difficult conversations, but ones we’ll have in the safety of a tremendously caring and supportive university.

Again, building a long-term inclusive culture takes time, sensitivity, and steadfast resolve. Please stand with me – along with the IU School of Nursing faculty, staff, and students – to forge a truly sensitive, inclusive, diverse, and equitable future. This year, we can confidently say: Let’s go and resolve some weighty matters!