Strategies to engage and retain African-American students in BSN programs based on oral history

The nursing profession continues to struggle with attracting African-American applicants into our nursing programs, supporting their retention and their success to graduation. This problem must be rectified if we are to generate adequate numbers of African-American nurses to meet the increasingly diverse and complex needs of our changing demographics.

An oral history was conducted with the first four African-American nurses to graduate from a Predominantly White Institution between 1960 and 1969 to learn more about how they successfully navigated their educational environment and recommendations they could offer that could be used today to support our African-American students.

Participants told us that we need to value and pay attention to students as unique individuals, provide mentoring and skill building support, create group gathering opportunities for African-American students to bond, create and deepen their connection with each other and faculty in order to build trust and community. In addition, the cultural role of religion and spirituality cannot be minimized in this population as it serves to reinforce connection, hope, grounding and a familiar source of support.

To attract, retain and support academic success of Africa-American students in nursing programs, strategies must target the needs at the individual, group and faculty levels in addition to addressing organizational and structural practices that serve as additional impediments to the success of these nursing students.