A long-overdue resource to tackle racism

In February this year, the authors of a rapid review of evidence into inequalities in health care considered not just the health inequalities of several patient groups, but also the ethnic inequalities in the NHS workforce (Kapadia et al, 2022).

The authors considered studies of several areas of the NHS, including workplace inequality for British staff from ethnic minorities and racism in the workplace. They also found that internationally educated nurses experienced feeling distressed, confused and humiliated due to the covert and overt discrimination experienced while working in the UK. Incidents of discrimination reported by participants included: ‘patients who exhibited racist behaviours’, ‘refusing care from international or Black nurses’, ‘staff who would undermine the work of their international colleagues, or draw unfair conclusions about work ethic, motivation or character’ and ‘managers were also seen to apply more scrutiny to Black international nurses working in their team’.

I feel that there has been a lack of action to improve NHS workplace culture in this area. I was therefore pleased this month to see that NHS England (2022) has launched a resource entitled Combatting Racial Discrimination against Minority Ethnic Nurses, Midwives and Nursing Associates.