Time for nursing to eradicate hair discrimination

Nurses worldwide have been rightly lauded for their tireless contributions during the global COVID‐19 pandemic. Amid a serious global shortage, nursing remains plagued by recruitment and retention problems as it struggles to attract, educate and retain the best potential nurses who reflect the diverse composition of their communities. The world has been shaken by the Black Lives Matter movement and the growing awareness that many health professions and workplaces are pervasively white, structurally and systemically racist and must change to become welcoming, encouraging places for all members of society. Amid all of this, it is incomprehensible that black nurses in particular continue to be subjected to organisations’ discriminatory ‘hair policies’ (Grant, 2018).

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Cox, G., Sobrany, S., Jenkins, E., Musipa, C. and Darbyshire, P. (2021), Time for nursing to eradicate hair discrimination. J Clin Nurs, 30: e45-e47. , which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15708. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions