Editor’s note: We’ve all witnessed the recent public outcry against instances of racist behavior and brutality. As nurses, we also witness the toll racism takes on health as well as the racial inequities in access to care and within health care institutions. In the below blog post, AJN senior editor Corinne McSpedon excerpts her recent conversation about these topics with Monica McLemore. I also encourage you to listen to the recent webinar, Nursing’s Role in Addressing Racism, in which a panel of nurses address structural racism, how it prevents health equity, and what actions one can take to change or influence change. You can earn one contact hour of CNE credit.—Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Confronting racism during the pandemic.

Over the summer, I spoke with Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, to discuss antiracism efforts amid the COVID-19 crisis and the nationwide demonstrations against police brutality. McLemore is an associate professor in the Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is also affiliated with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. She previously worked for nearly three decades as a public health and staff nurse.

Below are highlights of this discussion. The full article, A Conversation with Monica R. McLemore, is free this month.

Practical tools.

Amid ongoing calls to address institutional and structural racism, McLemore talked with AJN about how nurses can confront and address racism and elaborated on some practical tools to guide this work.

“There are five tools and skills nurses can implement incrementally,” McLemore says. “I use ‘SPLIT’ to describe these: simulation, public health, leading, immersion, and tension. SPLIT is a relatively simple way to think about what we can do right now about not only COVID-19 but also the racial awareness people are starting to wake up to. . .”

‘Basic shoe leather epidemiology.’

“We in health services provision think we always have to recreate the wheel,” McLemore notes. But, she points out, “there are books, webinars, modules, and seminars people can take that really look at the science and tools for public health professionals around dismantling racism . . . tools we can disseminate, share, and amplify.”

“I see our colleagues on social media being mad about mask wearing, which is a public health intervention,” she observes. “Have we gotten so far away from basic shoe leather epidemiology and public health interventions that we don’t remember the purpose of quarantine, masks, contact tracing, and physical or social distancing?”

Leadership.

McLemore describes various ways nurses can use their power—individually and collectively—to work to dismantle racism during the pandemic. This includes taking the lead in honoring those who’ve died from COVID-19.

“Who is doing the creative thinking around honoring the people who have died, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color?” she asks. “Nursing should and could lead that. It feels purposive not to, and it’s a separate layer of the onion as to why you see racial protests in the street. These issues are intertwined and not happening at the same time by chance. Risk is not equitably shared in life or death.”

Additional information.

An article about Bernardine Lacey, a nurse leader, educator, political advocate, researcher, and clinician, was referenced during the abovementioned webinar and may be of additional interest. Lacey details, in her own words, the racism she experienced during her childhood and early in her education and career in ‘You Don’t Have Any Business Being This Good’: An Oral History Interview with Bernardine Lacey, which appeared in AJN’s August issue. As authors Sandra Lewenson, EdD, RN, FAAN, and Ashley Graham-Perel, MS, RN-BC, NPD-BC, CNE, note, “her story allows for an exploration of some of the difficult truths about racism, the culpable role of nursing in this history, and the impact of historical accounts on the profession’s current inclusivity and diversity efforts.”