“Creating space” – Faculty of Health

Dalton alumnus Dr. Keisha Jefferies has completed a timely, much-needed, and long-awaited publication on the available literature on Black nurses in Canada.

Dr. Keisha Jefferies (BScN’13, MN’17, PhD Nursing’22) is a shining star in Canadian nursing scholarship, advocating for inclusion in the profession across the country and highlighting inequalities in health care in Canada.

After three years dedicated to its completion, Dr. Jefferies was delighted to share “Black Nurses in the Nursing Profession in Canada: A Scoping Review”, with the world. Published in June in the International Journal for Health Equity, this article shares truths about nursing in Canada that are largely ignored. These truths include the contributions of black nurses to the profession and the anti-black racism embedded in nursing education and practice across the country. With their findings, the Jefferies team aims to transform Canada’s nursing workforce through education policies and programs – Jefferies insists this is the only way to instill change system that better supports Black nurses working in Canada.

“We need to take history into account, understand how it influences the present and reflect: what can we do to shape a more inclusive and progressive future for nursing and for society in general? she explained.

The research team used a systematic and internationally recognized methodology to conduct their review. Under Jefferies’ direction, the team mapped gray and peer-reviewed literature, including primary and secondary sources, oral histories, and reports. The Jefferies team addressed two main objectives in their review:

1) Describe how black nurses have been portrayed in the literature

2) Map existing evidence to illuminate knowledge gaps and priorities for future research

From the included literature, the Jefferies team conceptualized five categories: leadership and career progression, historical situation, racism and discrimination, immigration, and workforce diversity. The included literature used a range of methodologies, such as anti-racist frameworks, black feminist theory, postcolonial feminist perspectives, and intersectionality.

Jefferies enjoyed learning how different scholars are implementing non-traditional frameworks in their research, including data collection and analysis: “We need to integrate non-traditional ways of knowing, theoretical frameworks and perspectives into our research and our practice. We need to make room for the stories and voices that have historically been excluded and continue to be marginalized,” she explained.

Because there is so little documentation of the history of Black nursing in Canada, the research team had to work especially hard to uncover the truths they strove to better understand. This struggle is not new to Jefferies – his past publications address the lack of data on black health and nursing in Canada. As a solution, Jefferies promotes race-based research as necessary to achieve equity in nursing in Canada. She also advocates the inclusion of a trusted librarian on research teams – especially for systematic reviews of all kinds.

Jefferies expressed his gratitude for the funding for the review, generously provided by Dal Health’s Nursing Research and Development Fund. This research grant enabled Jefferies to hire two African Nova Scotian research assistants. She was thrilled to have the opportunity to mentor and supervise two research assistants – mentoring is an integral part of her PhD work.

Nova Scotia Healththe Canadian Nurses Association, and several other key stakeholders have already expressed interest in the findings of the review. Additionally, Jefferies works closely with associations that specialize in mobilizing Black nurses in Canada, including the Black Nurses Association of Nova Scotia and the Pan-Canadian Association of Nurses of African Descent.

Organic

Before beginning her doctoral studies, Jefferies completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing at Dalhousie. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto. Her academic and advocacy work focuses on addressing anti-Black racism in nursing, post-secondary admissions, and social justice across the country. She is the co-founder of Dal’s Community of Black Students in Nursing (CBSN). From 2019 to 2020, she was a junior fellow at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance. In 2019, she received the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. In 2020, she received awards from the Killam Trust and Research Nova Scotia.