The Challenge of Diversity in Nursing Leadership: The Need to Avoid Misinformation and False Facts

Abstract

This article probes two recent (2022-2023) instances of false narratives in nursing, both with the laudable goal of promoting diversity in nursing leadership, but which presentations are flawed by false facts. The first example is the installation of portraits of Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursing, and Mary Seacole, the Crimean War businesswoman and volunteer, at Toronto’s University Health Network and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. The second is a 2023 article by a nursing academic, Jennifer Woo, urging decolonization of “the history of nursing by magnifying the contributions of nurses of colour”. It includes mention of a number of leading nurses of colour, however with an enormous number of false claims for Mary Seacole. Brief mention is also made of Rappaport’s 2022 revised book on Seacole calling her “a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian”. This article goes on to present two leading diversity nurses well worthy of celebration: The Nigerian Kofoworola Abeni Pratt, the first Black nurse in Britain’s National Health Service, who led in Nigerian nurses assuming leadership roles from white, British, expatriate nurses. The other is the redoubtable Mary Elizabeth Carnegie (1916-2008), the African-American nurse who led in the racial integration of nursing in the United States. Consideration is given as well to how such major mistakes are made in the nursing literature, with a recommendation for much more critical reading of sources.