Acute care nurses’ attitudes toward nursing students with disabilities: A focused ethnography

Discrimination towards individuals with disabilities is problematic within nursing. There have been calls to increase diversity in nursing and this includes embracing nurses with disabilities. Increasing diversity in nursing requires increasing diversity among nursing students; in this way, nurse educators are gatekeepers to the profession. Clinical education is a crucial element of nursing education, yet there have been very few studies related to the clinical education of nursing students with disabilities. There have been no studies of attitudes of acute care nurse preceptors toward students with disabilities in the United States. This gap is important as the majority of clinical experiences occur in the acute care environment. Utilizing a focused ethnography, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 acute care nurses with at least two years’ experience precepting students. While positive feelings about nursing students with disabilities were shared, thoughts and behavioral intentions remained negative. Six themes emerged: safety, barriers, otherness, communicating to meet needs, disclosure, and student versus colleague. Attitudinal barriers are the primary barriers faced by individuals with disabilities in becoming and practicing as nurses. Nurses in practice and education must embrace more inclusive attitudes towards individuals with disabilities.