• Print This
• Select Text Size:
• Comments
• 

2008 was a year without a Christmas for Clora Snow, RN, BSN. Snow was a struggling minority mother raising five children on her own. Although it was heartbreaking, not having a tree and presents wasn’t the worst hardship that she and her children had faced. Snow, who is black, is a widow who had been remarried and separated. She also coped with being laid off and losing her home and car during some rough years before earning her RN and BSN.

“It was a struggle and a very stressful situation,” she says. “I couldn’t go out and buy the essentials that I needed when I needed them.”

Despite overwhelming challenges, Snow was determined to succeed and saw nursing as her ticket to a better life. “I knew that nurses are really in demand, and that I could make more money if I furthered my education,” she says.

Snow was able to take advantage of the ladder of career opportunities that nursing provides by working as a private duty LPN while completing her BSN. Today, as a private-duty RN working for Independence Plus in Oak Brook, Ill., Snow is getting back on her feet. She has her own place and a car. She is also completing ACLS certification and an IV infusion class and is seeking employment in a hospital ICU. Looking down the road, she is interested in pursuing her MSN with a goal of becoming an NP.

Nursing offers multiple entry points to a career that can put low-income minorities on the fast track to better earning potential. The compensation offered by nursing, averaging $65,130 a year, which is about double the national median salary, is a big draw for many low-income minorities such as Snow who are looking to provide a brighter future for themselves.

Sometimes, earning the RN designation is just the beginning. It’s not uncommon for black nurses to continue their educations beyond the associate or diploma level. “Fifty-two percent of African-American nurses eventually get a baccalaureate degree — a far greater percentage than that for white nurses, which is 46%,” says Patricia D’Antonio, RN, PhD, FAAN, associate director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Also, about 46% of Hispanic nurses eventually earn a bachelor’s degree, while only 12% of Hispanic women in general have a bachelor’s degree, according to D’Antonio.

“Nursing opens many doors for us. ... It’s a fabulous career for male and female Hispanics because it’s a steady job that has wonderful benefits,” says Norma Martinez Rogers, RN, PhD, FAAN, president of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses. Rogers is a widow who raised two sons while working as a nurse. She continued her education and eventually became a professor in the department of family nursing at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

Many minority nurses also apply their earnings, education, and experience toward accomplishment in a second career, such as real estate, according to D’Antonio. One of these nurses was Martha Bentley of Atlanta, who died in 2005. Bentley used her savings from her private duty nursing job to buy land and build a house. She sold the house, then used the profits to build another house and sell it for more profits, continuing the successful pattern. Bentley’s enterprise provided some of the first single-family homes available to black home buyers in Atlanta, according to D’Antonio.

It’s not unusual for nurses from minority groups to use their success in nursing as a means to advance the socioeconomic status of others in their communities. American Indian nurses often return to their home areas and take the lead in such capacities as research and education, according to Martha Baker, RN, PhD, CNE, ACNS-BC, president of the National Alaska Native American Indian Nurses Association and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

One such nurse is John Lowe, RN, PhD, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing in Boca Raton. Each semester, Lowe gives back to his community by bringing a group of graduate nursing students to Oklahoma to provide disease prevention and health promotion services to high-risk American Indian youth. The program also is designed to show these children it is possible for them to go to college, succeed in a career, and improve their quality of life, especially if they are interested in nursing.

The U.S. Indian Health Service offers a scholarship program that provides assistance for nursing students who agree to work for the department after graduation. In addition, many American Indians in rural areas have access to nursing programs through local tribal colleges, according to Baker.

“Native American nurses frequently start out as LPNs, and then later become associate-degree RNs,” says Baker.

The Chicago Public Schools’ practical nursing program gives local high school students, which include black and Hispanic populations, a boost toward a nursing career. The free program provides students with the opportunity to learn practical nursing and sit for their LPN boards (NCLEX-PN) by the time they graduate from high school. There were 53 graduates in June 2009.

About 80% of the program’s graduates eventually go to college and become RNs, according to Sandra Webb-Booker, RN, MS, PhD, citywide coordinator for the program, herself a black woman who began her career as a nurses’ aide.

About 30% of the students in the program are from low-income families. It’s not unusual for these students to be faced with such overwhelming issues as homelessness and parents with addiction problems, says Webb-Booker.

“These kids are determined that they don’t want to live like that, and they see the nursing program as their ticket to a better life,” she says. “In high school, these LPN students are already seeing that there is more potential to grow and develop earlier and quicker in the nursing field than there might be in other career paths.”

In New York, Phelps Memorial Hospital Center in Sleepy Hollow has partnered with the local school system to develop the Nursing Career Pathway Program, geared toward the local low-income population, which is primarily Hispanic.

“Nursing is not just a job for them, but a career that they can hold onto long-term,” says Lucy Engelhardt, RN, MS, vice president of nursing services.

Graduates of the program may work as nursing assistants in the hospital and are eligible for tuition reimbursement while they attend nursing school.

The program runs at capacity, which is six students per class. “The word is out that this is the way to go,” says Jane Dillon, RN, BS, special projects coordinator, nursing services.

One of the program’s success stories is a Hispanic teenager with limited English skills and two young children to raise. Through the resources and inspiration offered by the Nursing Career Pathway Program, the young woman was able to improve her English, earn her GED, and soon will complete requirements to finish her BSN and become an RN.

“She’s made it, and now she gives the tours to the kids in the program,” says Dillon. “She’s come full circle.”

Catherine Spader, RN, is a contributing writer for Gannett Healthcare Group.

---

To comment, e-mail editorNTL@gannetthg.com.

Reader Comments

You must adhere to the Terms of Service and Community Rules for Nurse.com when posting comments. Please do not post disparaging or offensive remarks. You may use links in your post.

Be the first to comment!