The nursing profession, the NHS and the government need to fight much harder against discrimination if the sharp decline in the number of black and ethnic minority people entering nursing is to be reversed, says Jackie Mensah

THERE IS no doubt that nursing now has a grave recruitment problem among black and ethnic minority communities. The perspective, skills and knowledge which black people bring to the profession is gradually being lost or wasted away. The best rationale I have heard for the lack of interest in nursing by young people from black communities came from Ruth Wilmot, a retired nurse who was one of the first Jamaican women to train as a nurse in the UK in the 1960s.