Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has placed significant strain on United States’ health care and health care providers. While most Americans were sheltering in place, nurses headed to work. Many lacked adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), increasing the risk of becoming infected or infecting others. Some health care organizations were not transparent with their nurses; many nurses were gagged from speaking up about the conditions in their workplaces. This study used a descriptive phenomenological design to describe the lived experience of acute care nurses working with limited access to PPE during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 28 acute care nurses via telephone, WebEx, and Zoom. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The major theme, emotional roller coaster, describes the varied intense emotions the nurses experienced during the early weeks of the pandemic, encompassing eight subthemes: scared and afraid, sense of isolation, anger, betrayal, overwhelmed and exhausted, grief, helpless and at a loss, and denial. Other themes include: self‐care, ‘hoping for the best’, ‘nurses are not invincible’, and ‘I feel lucky’. The high levels of stress and mental assault resulting from the COVID‐19 crisis call for early stress assessment of nurses and provision of psychological intervention to mitigate lasting psychological trauma.

Background There is a paucity of Black and minority ethnic group nurse leaders and faculty in the nursing profession, even though the overall number of nurses within this demographic has increased. This study aimed to examine Black nurses' perceptions of the barriers to career advancement in nursing profession in the United States. Procedure Participants included 30 Black nurses aged 25 to 65 from health care settings across five US states recruited through purposive sampling. The study used a focused ethnographic design with semi‐structured interviews to elicit responses about participants perceptions and experiences of seeking leadership and faculty positions. Results Thematic analysis revealed seven main themes: maintaining white comfort, distrust, no one like me, paving the way, worthy of representation, leadership role not expected of Black nurses, and an advanced degree does not equal advanced opportunities. Conclusion The findings suggest that Black nurses face significant challenges in entering leadership or faculty positions. They face racial discrimination and lack access to mentorship and support which discourages sufficiently qualified and experienced nurses from applying for high‐level positions. Ensuring all nurses are afforded equal opportunity for career advancement is essential for the nursing profession's continued growth.

Research has shown that racism adds to and significantly exacerbates the risk for health disparities among patients (Peek et al., 2010), along with a loss of opportunities in the nursing profession (Iheduru-Anderson, 2020a). In 2002, Jones demanded that health care professionals explicitly name race and racism in the discussion of the health and well-being of the U.S. population. Adding that initiatives aimed at addressing and eliminating racial health disparities must explore the fundamental causes which are rooted in racism (Jones, 2002). The nursing sector should be concerned with issues such as racism. Race, in particular, has been shown to cause inequality in nursing prac

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NIENs face personal and organizational barriers to adaptation, especially fear, anger and disappointment. Future research should seek to develop a model for optimal adaptation that focuses on improving both personal and organizational facilitators and decreasing barriers.

As the COVID-19 crisis escalated in early 2020, schools of nursing and nursing programs in the United States and around the world shut down. Nurse faculty were forced transition to online teaching in a short time. Descriptive phenomenology was used to explore the experiences of associate degree nurse faculty who transitioned to online teaching during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inductive thematic analysis was performed on the interview data from 41 faculty teaching at associate degree nursing programs in the U.S. The findings of the study are presented under 6 main themes: stressful/overwhelming, feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, support, new knowledge and growth under pressure, new opportunities for nursing education, and leadership in times of crisis. To prevent the worsening of the nurse faculty shortage and help educate nurses for the future, nurse educators must be supported and recognized for their work during this period and beyond.

Background Unfortunately, racism and discrimination against Ethnic minority (EM) has been globalized, universally infecting industries worldwide, and the field of nursing has not been spared. In the United States (US), overt and institutionalized racism (IR) still permeates the fields of nursing, nursing leadership, and nursing education. Programs to address these disparities, and efforts by nursing professional societies and nursing education policymaking bodies to address racism in the nursing field, specifically with nursing leadership and education, have met with little success. Objective The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the existence and magnitude of racism and its impact on the fields of nursing, nursing leadership, and nursing education, and to make evidence-based recommendations for an agenda for reforming nursing education in the US. Methods A narrative literature review was conducted with a focus on pulling together the strongest evidence on which to base policy recommendations. Results Based on the available literature, we put forth five recommendations aimed at modifying nursing education in the US as a strategy to counter IR in the US in the nursing field. Conclusions Recommendations to address IR in nursing focus on nursing education, and involve implementing programs to address the lack of opportunity for both EM students and faculty in nursing, developing an anti-discriminatory pedagogy, and incorporating diversity initiatives as key performance indicators (KPIs) in the process of approval and accreditation of nursing programs.

A large number of internationally educated nurses are recruited each year from developing low-income countries to alleviate the nursing shortage experienced by US healthcare organizations (Kingma, 2007; Li, Nie, & Li, 2014). Many of these nurses speak with a non-native accent. As students, they may be considered English as a second language students or English language learners. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 4.2 million Black immigrants living in the United States in 2016, making up 10% of all Black people in the United States (Anderson & Lopez, 2018). Growth in the foreign-born Black population is fueled by African migration, with Africans comprising 39% of the overall foreign-born Black population (Anderson & Lopez, 2018). According to the Migration Policy Institute report, sub-Saharan African immigrants have higher levels of educational attainment compared to other immigrants and the native U.S. population (Echeverria-Estrada & Batalova, 2019), and a large share of them work in the healthcare sector (Anderson & Connor, 2018; New American Economy, 2018). The exact number of Black African-born nurses (BABNs) in the United States is not known. However, it can be reasonably assumed that they contribute to the 19.5% of nurses, who identify as ethnic minorities, and the 243,032 Black nurses, who comprise 6.2% of registered nurses in the United States (Smiley et al., 2018). The racial and ethnic identities of nurses who hold managerial and executive positions are not recorded in official nursing workforce data. Nurse migration is motivated by the search for professional development, better quality of life, personal safety (Tregunno, Peters, Campbell, & Gordon, 2009), and even the desire to experience new cultures. However, increased earning potential, career, and learning opportunities continue to be the most frequently reported incentives for nurse migration, especially by nurses from less-developed countries (Kingma, 2007). 1.2 | Discrimination Studies show that African-born students and nurses face numerous challenges during their transition to the United States