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Racism

Racism is another important aspect of culture. Some educational theorists believe that nursing education needs to pay more attention to educating nurses who may hold racist views:

To date most nursing education has not been aimed at the resistant group of students who hold racist views, neither has it sought to awaken student to an impassioned stance. Instead status quo has been perpetuated by applying a consistent method of education to all students. (Kirkham, 1998, p.134)

This view of education emphasizes the need for nursing programs to teach students to engage in serious and prolonged introspection and self-observation.

You have to educate nurses to dig deep into themselves to get in touch with that side of them that is going to make them open and flexible and not afraid of something different. (Cortis, 2000, p.112)

This down-to-earth point of view assumes that any dominant group will make certain assumptions about the "right" way to do things, and that other ways will look strange. This aspect of racism is called ethnocentrism. Husting (1999) defines ethnocentrism as "the belief that one's own culture is superior in every way to all others" (p. 26).