| The increase in patient ethnic diversity in the health care environment has not been mirrored by an increase in ethnic diversity within the nursing profession. There is a need for increased focus on the retention of ethnically diverse nursing students in order to meet the needs of an ethnically diverse patient population. The quality of caring demonstrated by faculty in the faculty---student relationship can have significant influence on the student's successful completion of the nursing program. Faculty understanding of how ethnically diverse students perceive caring faculty behaviors may assist faculty to mitigate attrition of these students. The purpose of this exploratory correlational quantitative study was to investigate ethnically diverse students' perception of caring faculty behaviors. Watson's theory of human caring and Bandura's social learning theory provided the theoretical frameworks for this study. Ninety-seven ethnically diverse pre-licensure nursing students completed the Nursing Students' Perception of Instructor Caring survey online. Data of the nine subscales of attention, availability, acceptance, communication, confidentiality, encouragement, flexibility, kindness, and respect were analyzed. Results demonstrated similarity across all ethnic groups in subscales attention, communication confidentiality, encouragement, acceptance, and kindness. The least similarity was demonstrated in subscales availability, acceptance, and kindness. Correlational statistical analysis revealed there was no significant relationship between a student's ethnicity and the perception of faculty caring behaviors. Recommendations for future research include replication of this study with a larger sample size that is more widely distributed within the United States. |
