Race and racism are matters of urgent concern for the international nursing community. Recent global events have presented the discipline with an opportunity to generate and sustain long overdue discussions. However, with this opportunity comes a need to consciously attend to what we mean by race and racism, especially in the context of the nursing literature. Indeed, the development of antiracism depends on how we conceptualise race and racism; it is these conceptualisations that actively shape the scope and priorities of (...) antiracist organising and action. The aim of this critical interpretative synthesis (CIS) is to examine conceptualisations of race and racism in the nursing literature by drawing on contemporary race scholarship. The synthesis of diverse literature is enabled through the explorative and expansive process of the CIS method. This review generates three synthesising arguments—a problem ‘of’ not ‘for’; conceptual inconsistencies and drift; and reliance on the lens of experience—that both critique and contribute to the nursing literature. In the pursuit of antiracism, this article urges us to pay close attention to our conceptualisations of race and racism by illuminating the pitfalls that occur when our conceptualisations are inconsistent, contradictory, or simply neglected. (shrink)

Defining a nurse as literate is disciplinary and contextual, linked to professional identity formation, and an issue impacting patient safety. Literacy and language proficiency are concepts assessed through examining skills in four pillars: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This article explores how literacy is not only a practice issue but inextricably intertwined with issues of race, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness in our profession—both in regulatory policy and classroom pedagogy. In making the argument that language is a proxy for race, three (...) cases of language and literacy will be presented. First, the deficit discourse of multilingual student struggle is stereotyped to the presence or absence of an accent, with multilingual student needs often treated homogeneously in disregard of population heterogenous abilities. Second, regulatory policies for language testing internationally educated nurses are discriminatory with testing context bearing little relationship to the language needs of nursing practice. Third, that the myth of “one standard English” results in racist evaluation practices of student academic performance. Recommendations are made for reframing how language and literacy are viewed in nursing education and regulation of practice with a focus on acknowledgment of one's personal relationship to racial issues and emphasizing the need for a change in mindset toward racialized multilingual students and writers. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of positionality and reflexivity drawing on the experience of a British Minority Ethnic (BME) group senior nurse researching nurses with the same ethnic heritage in an IPA study. It explores how using IPA informed reflexivity and positionality as a researcher who shared the same ethnicity with the research participants. The IPA study allowed for the exploration of Internationally Educated Nurses' (IENs) perspectives on their integration into British healthcare and their navigation of career progression. The central (...) aims of an IPA study are to understand the participant's world, its description, the development of a clear, and open interpretative analysis with a descriptive focus on the social, cultural and theoretical context, and the participant's sense‐making of their lived experience. In this paper, we discuss how the lead researcher employed reflexivity, stated his intentionality and positionality in the conduct of the IPA study. This paper discusses some examples of the effects of positionality and reflexivity in the conduct of research by researchers of different racial background, and explicate the influence of personal and professional experiences of a researcher in using reflexivity and positionality to ensure cross‐cultural validity and reliability of an IPA research. This paper concludes that appropriate use of reflexivity and positionality in an IPA study may recognise the personal and professional influence of a researcher's experiences on the research process, including their ethnicity. (shrink)