Diversity in the nursing profession begins with the hiring process, but needs to be addressed at the university level and include and support those with disabilities. Bringing awareness and visibility to nurses with disabilities removes a barrier for individuals who want to enter the profession.
In nursing, the phrase, “We have always done it this way” is common. The statement alone confirms a much-needed change. The 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” states that we must adapt to a changing healthcare environment. To welcome this changing environment, the nursing profession needs to embrace diversity. To become a diverse profession we must start at the university level and accommodate those with disabilities. As educators we must challenge students’ academic abilities and adapt to the new essential technical standards laid out by the California Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.
Recruiting nurses with disabilities aims to accept these individuals into nursing programs and implementing their accommodations. This seems simple; however, according to Englund & Lancaster tremendous barriers exist for these students. My colleague and I uncovered one such barrier within our own faculty. We found a disconnect regarding what reasonable accommodations entail, so we sought to explore faculty understanding with the intent to close equity gaps and promote an environment that supports diversity and inclusion.
We attended the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) Management Institute Conference’s “An introduction to managing accommodations for students in health science programs.” This presentation provided an overview on how to address complex accommodation requests in the classroom, lab, and clinical environments. It addressed unique challenges, such as determining appropriate accommodations in patient care settings, meeting technical standards, planning proactively to anticipate accommodation needs in clinical environments, and guiding students in applying for testing accommodations in licensing exams.
During the AHEAD conference, we received the book Equal Access for Students with Disabilities: The Guide for Health Science Professional Education, which we shared with our School of Nursing and Health Sciences (SONHS) faculty and staff. We moderated discussions of significant chapters at regularly scheduled faculty meetings. At these sessions, we aimed to improve the knowledge and understanding of best practices for accommodations in nursing, while also helping to destigmatize the perception of accommodations and offering specific guidance to students applying for testing accommodations in licensing exams.
Our discussion of current practices in the nursing program and the policy and procedures for accommodations compared to best practice and recent case laws revealed that we needed to increase faculty and staff understanding of existing supports. My colleague and I led the program and met with staff from the Center for Accessibility to increase knowledge of existing supports and discussed the development of departmental policies to ensure alignment with university practices, which culminated in a year-end presentation and panel discussion with local experts.
This program adapted our university’s current institutional practices to ensure accessible programs and adequate accommodations for nursing students with disabilities in the classroom, lab, and clinical setting, remove barriers to completion for these students, and to develop a more robust framework in SONHS for inclusive practices for students with disabilities.
Our university views inclusion and belonging as strategic retention and attainment initiatives through its Center for Inclusive Excellence, as we have intentionally sought to eliminate attainment gaps based on race and socio-economic status. Our goal was to increase the knowledge of our nursing faculty related to accommodations for students with disabilities in the nursing program and increase awareness of existing supports and accommodations for SONHS students. The momentum must continue because our program’s overarching goal remains to increase the number of nursing students with disabilities at our university.
Megan E. Pet, DNP, MSN/MBA, RN, is an assistant professor at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, IL.
References
American Nurses Association. Nurses with disabilities: Transforming health care for all. July 11, 2023. nursingworld.org/content-hub/resources/workplace/nurses-with-disabilities
Cameron VK, Jones M, Lee S, McNelis AM. Barriers to retention of nurses with acquired disability: A scoping review. Nurs Manage. 2024;55(3):8-16. doi:10.1097/nmg.0000000000000101.
Englund HM, Lancaster RJ. Differences in marginality between nursing students with and without disabilities. J Nurs Educ. 2022;61(8):429-38. doi:10.3928/01484834-20220602-03
Institute of Medicine Committee on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing. The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2011.
Marks B, Ailey S. White paper on inclusion of students with disabilities in nursing educational programs for the California Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities (CCEPD). https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Teaching-Resources/Student-Disabilities-White-Paper.pdf
The National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities. nond.org/
Roth J, Cameron V. Disability through a nursing professional development lens: Broadening our lens, looking deeper, and moving forward. J Nurses Prof Dev. 2024;40(4):225-8. doi:10.1097/NND.0000000000001061
