Diversity in Healthcare and the Importance of Representation
By the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences
In the United States today, there is a persistent lack of diversity among healthcare professionals. It’s critical that healthcare organizations improve diversity to ensure that people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, races, ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, religions, and genders are represented in the healthcare workforce.
Doing so has a positive impact not only on the organization itself, but also on the individual patients and wider communities.
This post discusses the importance of diversity in healthcare and highlights the key benefits of increased representation for both providers and patients.
How Diverse Is Healthcare Today?
Most active physicians today are white men and more nursing and rehabilitative positions are held by women—in turn, people of color are still vastly underrepresented in these areas. It’s important for employers to understand current healthcare demographics and the barriers and challenges faced by women, people of color, and LGBTQ people in the healthcare workforce, which we’ll cover more below.
Image by Freepik
