| Minorities are underrepresented in nursing, as evidenced by a lack of minority nurses, minority nursing faculty, and college minority nursing department leaders in comparison to the increased minority population of the United States. The literature indicates that minority health care providers are an essential component of delivering culturally sensitive care to minority populations. The minority nursing pipeline narrows, with the staff nursing population being largest, followed by nursing faculty, and becoming constricted at the level of college nursing department leadership.;The purpose of the study was to identify characteristics of college minority nursing department leaders. The research questions addressed characteristics, essential characteristics, and characteristics that were different because of one's minority status. A nursing department leader was defined as the person who has administrative responsibilities for a college nursing program or allied health occupations in the position of chair, director, associate chair/director, or assistant chair/director for at least 1 year and is a minority.;This study was qualitative and used a phenomenological approach. Purposive sampling was utilized, which resulted in 13 participants. Potential participants were identified from information available to the researcher and through the technique of snowball sampling. In-depth, semistructured interviews were used to collect data. Content analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts and resulting themes were identified. Data were primarily displayed through the use of words and included participant excerpts to validate themes related to each research question.;A total of 8 themes surfaced that were essential to the college nursing department leaders: collaboration, leading others, seeking professional growth, valuing people/relationships, communication skills, competency/knowledge, adaptive coping response, and identifying the problem/analysis. The remaining 7 themes reflecting characteristics of college nursing department leaders were management experience, fairness, integrity/honesty, perseverance, age-related wisdom, prioritize/organize, and trust. Sensitivity to cultural differences and influence of familial culture were the 2 themes that emerged that were different, based on the college nursing leader's minority status. |
