WCN Diverse Nurse Faculty Mentorship Program

WCN’s mission is to support a healthy Washington by engaging nurses’ expertise, influence, and perspective and by building a diverse, highly qualified nurse workforce to meet future demands. When WCN surveyed nurse faculty in 2017, we found that approximately 40% of nurse faculty planned to retire by 2027, and that the racial and ethnic diversity of nurse faculty is less than the nursing student population and the population of the state of Washington

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, retirement and turn-over among nurse faculty appears to have accelerated. In addition, the pandemic has highlighted persistent disparities in care. For example, Black/African American rates of COVID-19 are twice the white population and Hispanic or Latinx rates of COVID-19 are three times the rate of the white population. In addition, there was harmful bias against Asians due to negative associations between COVID-19 and China.