Too hot to handle? Why concerns about racism are not heard... or acted on (2 February 2024)

Summary

This report aims to understand the NHS response to racism, what trusts and healthcare organisations do about it and how effective they are at addressing it. It brings together key learning from a number of significant tribunal cases and responses from 1,327 people to a survey about their experiences of raising allegations of racism within their organisations.

Content

Key findings

• UK trained staff are much more likely than internationally trained staff to raise concerns. 71.0% of UK trained staff have highlighted race discrimination as an issue, compared with 53.1% of internationally trained staff.
• The most common reason for not raising a concern of race discrimination was not believing anything would change (75.7%). 63.5% of people who didn’t raise their concerns were worried about being seen as a troublemaker
• Of those staff who have raised concerns, only 5.4% said they were taken seriously and that their problem was dealt with satisfactorily.
• The most common outcome to a race discrimination concern was nothing happening (the outcome in 42.7% of cases). In one in five (19.1%) instances, claims of race discrimination were treated the same as any other workplace dispute and referred to mediation. In 5% of cases, the individual raising the concern were themselves disciplined.
• 41.8% of respondents left their jobs as a result of their treatment.