Aim: This paper presents HAR as an expression of caring to create social justice within nursing and achieve a workforce that is representative of those being served.
Background: The lack of diversity within the health professions has been expressly linked in the literature to health disparities among underrepresented and marginalized groups.
Recommendations: Recognizing the value of diversity within healthcare has been the impetus for some health profession programs to use holistic admissions review (HAR) in the assessment and evaluation of applicant suitability. While current HAR recommendations in nursing broaden the lens on which criteria should be used to determine applicant suitability beyond standard academic metrics, existing models do not examine applicants' caring capacity.
Conclusion: Given caring is the essence of nursing, the authors offer a guiding framework to supplement the American Association of Colleges of Nursing criteria for HAR and a model by which nursing applicants are evaluated on their capacity to care.
Keywords: caring; diversity; holistic admissions review; social justice.
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