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Showing results for tags 'Racism'.
Found 125 results
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News Article
Minority ethnic staff ‘told to adopt Western names’ by managers
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
Concerns have been raised amid allegations that hospital managers have told minority ethnic staff to adopt 'Western work names' as their original names were 'too difficult to pronounce'. In a letter from the Care Quality Commission, published in the trust's July board papers, workers at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Foundation Trust told inspectors about their experiences during an unannounced visit in June. “This is not acceptable, individuals can only truly thrive in a work environment where they feel safe as themselves and belong rather than having to ‘fit in’.” Wrote the CQC’s head of hospital inspections Amanda Williams. Read full story (paywalled). Source: HSJ, 4 August 2021 -
News Article
Hospital staff complain to regulator about bullying, harassment and racism
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
Hospital staff at the Royal London Hospital have complained about bullying, harassment, racism and sexism during an inspection by the care watchdog. After conducting a review of the imagining department at the Royal London Hospital and Whipps Cross Hospital, there are now concerns over the culture of the service and conflict between staff. With both hospitals being overseen by Barts Health NHS Trust, chief executive Dame Alwen Williams has said “We will be ensuring staff have the resources to sustain improvements we need to make and there is appropriate oversight and processes in place for escalating wellbeing issues. We have a responsibility to listen to what our hard working team are saying, and respond appropriately and sensitively." Read full story. Source: The Independent, 30 July 2021 -
EventECRI has released its newest list of the Top 10 patient safety concerns confronting healthcare organisations. Healthcare providers, regardless of their practice setting, can start with our Top 10 list and use it to guide their own discussions about patient safety and improvement initiatives. This top 10 report highlights patient safety concerns across the continuum of care because patient safety strategies increasingly focus on collaborating with other provider organizations, community agencies, patients or residents, and family members. Each patient safety concern on this list may affect more than one setting. Join ECRI to learn more about the identified concerns and how your organisation can begin to address them. Register
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EventThe NHS is the biggest UK employer of Black and Minority Ethnic staff. More action needs to be taken to tackle disparities and prejudice to make our NHS more equitable for staff and patients alike. Dr Anu Obaro has recently shared her experiences through a BOB impact story, in which she has reflected on how she presented the subject to her peers at a roundtable event. Join Dr Anu Obaro and guests for a one-hour webinar as they discuss how you can take action to instil anti-racism where you work. In this webinar, you will learn: How racism can be institutionalised. How you can spread and scale the learnings from Dr Obaro’s write-up on BOB. How you can gather data to demonstrate outcomes in your workplace. Register
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Content ArticleThis report by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Muslim Women and the Muslim Women's Network UK aimed to investigate the maternity experiences of Muslim women in the UK, particularly from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds. It aimed to better understand the factors that influence the standard of maternity care Muslim women receive, and to determine whether this may be contributing to poorer outcomes for them and their babies. 1,022 women completed surveys and 37 women were interviewed for the research. The study focused on the care given throughout pregnancy in the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal periods. Experiences of sub-standard care were analysed to find out: whether they were associated with the women’s intersecting identities such as ethnicity, religion and class. whether attitudes were due to unconscious bias (for example, negative stereotypes or assumptions) or conscious action (for example, microaggressions). what role (if any) organisational policies and practices played. Particular attention was paid to how near misses occurred as this information could help to save lives of mothers and babies. To show what good practice looks like, positive experiences were also highlighted.
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Content ArticlePretty soon there won’t be a trust without an associate director or even board level director fully dedicated to all things equality, diversity and inclusion; relatively new senior roles that must have a purpose, job description and performance indicators. They will spend energy on yet more strategies, start from the top and hope something trickles down. Or they could start where the work is done, and build the tools to make equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) everyone’s responsibility. Trusts are full of people passionate about EDI. So many roles, so many champions. They meet, share stories, and champion the importance of EDI. All this busyness typically outside a governed frame without the necessary reporting, investigating, actions, outcomes, learning, and measurable improvement. To normalise EDI and make it everyone’s responsibility will involve enabling reporting of EDI incidents, investigating it, taking action, and learning from it, writes Dr Nadeem Moghal in an article for HSJ.
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Content ArticleThe King’s Fund was commissioned by NHS England to undertake a review of the leadership and culture of the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), including the culture and leadership needed for success as the organisation moves towards a steady state of independence. This report contains the authors' findings, obtained from individual interviews, focus groups and staff survey results, previous reports and other relevant information. It also contains HSIB staff members' responses to the findings, reflections from The King’s Fund review team about what needs to change, and a plan for the future.
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Content ArticleThis report from the BME Leadership Network spotlights the findings from a recent survey and engagement on the experience of senior black and minority ethnic leaders in the NHS.
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Content ArticleThis report by NHS Confederation looks at the lived experience of senior black and minority ethnic leaders in the NHS. It is based on the findings of a survey and series of roundtables conducted by the BME Leadership Network in spring 2022, which focused on the challenges BME leaders face in relation to racism and discrimination as they move through their careers. The report highlights that: More than half of surveyed BME NHS leaders considered leaving the health service in the last three years because of their experience of racist treatment while performing their role as an NHS leader. Colleagues, leaders and managers seemed to be a particular source of racist treatment, more so than members of the public. This is concerning, given that the NHS has been prioritising equality, diversity and inclusion activities in recent years. This suggests that more focused efforts are required at every level to reduce the incidence of racist behaviour and to improve awareness among all staff of the impact of this type of discrimination. Only 10 per cent of leaders surveyed were confident that the NHS is delivering its commitment to combat institutional racism and reduce health inequalities. Senior BME staff reported low levels of confidence in their own organisations’ abilities to manage and support a pipeline of diverse talent and in the ability of the system to achieve this at a national level. Only a minority were confident they could rely on the support of colleagues to challenge racial discrimination, and a smaller minority believed they would be supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement if challenging prejudice or discrimination locally. Leaders described how structural and cultural issues within the NHS led to a situation where BME leaders were not present in sufficient numbers to generate a climate of inclusivity and were sometimes siloed in particular types of role. This helped to create a situation where career progression was felt to be unduly challenging and where neither succession planning nor talent development were occurring at sufficient scale to support the next generation of diverse leaders. Some leaders reported policing their own behaviour in the workplace and compromising their values in order to fit in. Being able to represent their own cultures and be themselves at work was a critically important goal for many. The report outlines that it is essential that BME leaders are able to see effective development programmes to support diverse talent, and that they are provided with the right support to feel secure in calling out unacceptable behaviour. It highlights that the NHS needs to do more to tackle cultures of discriminatory behaviour, provide personal support to current and aspiring leaders, and develop succession planning and talent development schemes.
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Content Article
BMA: Racism in medicine (15 June 2022)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Culture
This report presents the findings of the British Medical Association (BMA) racism in medicine survey, which ran from October to December 2021. The survey sought to gather evidence of the racism experienced by doctors and medical students working in the NHS, and the impact of these experiences on their working lives and their career opportunities. All doctors and medical students in the UK, from all ethnic backgrounds, were invited to participate. The survey received 2030 responses in total, making it one of the largest of its kind. It found a concerning level of racism in the medical profession, stemming from fellow doctors, other NHS staff, and patients. These experiences of racism present in a variety of forms in the institutions and structures of the medical profession- Posted
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Content ArticleThis report considers the extent of the gap between the diversity in the workforce and local population of London, and that visible among NHS trust boards and senior management. It highlights the impact of this gap on the effectiveness of healthcare provision and patient experience, in light of research demonstrating that a diverse workforce in which all staff members’ contributions are valued is linked to good patient care.
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Content ArticleThis report outlines the results of a survey of 10,000 nursing staff in the UK carried out by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). The survey highlighted stark differences in career progression and treatment in the workplace between White nurses and those from a mixed ethnic background, and Black and Asian nurses. In the 35-44 age group, 66% of White and 64% of respondents from mixed ethnic backgrounds said they’d been promoted. This dropped to just 38% of Asian and 35% of Black respondents. Black respondents working in both hospital (39%) and community (32%) settings are more likely to report having experienced physical abuse than respondents of other ethnic backgrounds. In response to these findings, the RCN is calling on the UK Government to reform human rights law to help tackle workplace racism, including introducing a legal requirement to eliminate disparities in recruitment, retention and career progression. They also want employers to have greater responsibility to protect minority ethnic groups from racism in all its forms.
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Content ArticleMaternal outcomes for Black women are significantly worse than for white women - Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy, labour, or postpartum and are twice as likely to have their baby die in the womb or soon after birth. They are also at an increased risk of readmission to hospital in the six weeks after giving birth. This report by the organisation Five X More presents the findings of a survey into black women's experiences of maternity services in the UK. The survey aimed to understand how maternity care is delivered from the perspective of women from the Black community, and 1,340 Black and Black mixed women responded, sharing their experiences. It seeks to highlight the real life encounters behind the known disparities in maternal care. Women reported far more negative experiences than positive, and most of these experiences centred around interactions with healthcare professionals. The authors highlight three factors related to healthcare professionals that contribute to damaging interactions, to do with their attitudes, knowledge and assumptions. The report includes many quotes from Black women about their experiences of NHS care and the damaging long-term consequences of this, such as fear of having another baby, reluctance to engage with health services and mental health issues.
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Content ArticleSystemic racism in maternity care is an urgent human rights issue. For too long, evidence and narratives about why racial inequities in maternal outcomes persist have focussed on Black and Brown bodies being the problem – ‘defective’, ‘other’, a risk to be managed. Birthrights’ year-long inquiry into racial injustice has heard testimony from women, birthing people, healthcare professionals and lawyers outlining how systemic racism within maternity care – from individual interactions and workforce culture through to curriculums and policies – can have a deep and devastating impact on basic rights in childbirth. This jeopardises Black and Brown women and birthing people’s safety, dignity, choice, autonomy, and equality. The inquiry’s report, Systemic Racism, Not Broken Bodies, uncovers the stories behind the statistics and demonstrates that it is racism, not broken bodies, that is at the root of many inequities in maternity outcomes and experiences.
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Content Article
Being an anti-racist clinician (4 February 2022)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Health inequalities
Racism is a pervasive problem in Western society, leading to mental and physical unwellness in people from racialised groups. Psychology began as a racist discipline and still is. As such, most clinical training and curricula do not operate from an anti-racist framework. Although most therapists have seen clients with stress and trauma due to racialisation, very few were taught how to assess or treat it. Furthermore, clinicians and researchers can cause harm when they rely on White-dominant cultural norms that do not serve people of colour well. This paper from Racism is a pervasive problem in Western society, leading to mental and physical unwellness in people from racialized groups. Psychology began as a racist discipline and still is. As such, most clinical training and curricula do not operate from an anti-racist framework. Although most therapists have seen clients with stress and trauma due to racialisation, very few were taught how to assess or treat it. Furthermore, clinicians and researchers can cause harm when they rely on White-dominant cultural norms that do not serve people of colour well. This paper from Williams et al. discusses how clinicians can recognize and embrace an anti-racism approach in practice, research, and life in general. Included is a discussion of recent research on racial microaggressions, the difference between being a racial justice ally and racial justice saviour, and new research on what racial allyship entails. Ultimately, the anti-racist clinician will achieve a level of competency that promotes safety and prevents harm coming to those they desire to help, and they will be an active force in bringing change to those systems that propagate emotional harm in the form of racism. -
Content ArticleThe Government's Race Disparity Unit has published data relating to NHS staff reports of discrimination at work. The charts, tables and commentary on this page cover survey data from 2019, and the data from 2020 is available to download without commentary. 300 NHS organisations took part in the staff survey in 2019, including 229 NHS trusts.
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Content ArticleThis statement from Chair Peter Wyman addresses allegations of bullying and racism within NHS Blood and Transplant as reported in The Times on 21 August 2022. In the statement, Peter Wyman says, "I cannot overstate the importance we place in ensuring we have a strong, positive and inclusive culture so we can serve the public and patients who need us. “Issues of racism and bullying came to light in parts of our organisation two years ago after an in-depth staff listening exercise. We’ve moved on a lot in the past two years. Our actions have included providing a safe way for staff to raise and discuss issues by appointing a Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, improving recruitment processes to be more inclusive, matured how we manage conflict and grievances and refreshing our code of conduct so we all know the behaviours that are expected of us. We continue to measure progress through ongoing staff engagement. “We are making progress but like every good organisation we should always be challenging ourselves to do even better. In particular, I want to ensure we have a culture that enables each of us to be our best, that encourages everyone to speak up without fear or favour if they see something wrong or something which might be done better. I want a culture where everyone is valued for who they are and what they contribute. "There can be no place for any form of discrimination, bullying or harassment.”
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Content ArticleRAND Corporation and MedStar researchers examined the intersection of patient safety and racism, focusing on patient safety and health equity from clinician leaders' perspectives. An overarching emphasis of the work concerned the impact of racism and other related factors (i.e., bias) on patient safety events and potential interventions or changes (such as creating a culture of speaking up about racism in care) that can help prevent such events.
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Content ArticleThis practical guide was commissioned by The Health Foundation and NHS England to support NHS systems to tackle health inequalities. Co-written by the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network and a reference group of national experts, stakeholders, service providers and people with lived experience of inequalities, the guide suggests practical action that systems can take to ensure equitable access, excellent experience and optimal outcomes for all. The guide covers four key areas for action and features good practice examples which systems and providers can adapt and apply to their local context. There are also checklists to assist system leaders, managers, clinicians, and operational staff, to design new models of care and embed sustainable action to drive down healthcare inequalities. The guide supports the national Core20plus5 approach to reduce healthcare inequalities which focuses on a population group of the core 20% most deprived nationally and those from inclusion health groups; outlining five clinical areas of focus.
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Content ArticleThis briefing paper by thinktank The Centre for Mental Health explores evidence about the links between factors that worsen mental health, showing that living in poverty increases people’s risk of mental health difficulties, and that more unequal societies have higher overall levels of mental ill health. It also demonstrates that poverty and economic inequality intersect with structural racism to undermine the mental health of racialised and marginalised groups in society. Among other things, it highlights inequalities in access to primary care and mental health services across the UK.
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Content ArticleInfographic highlighting statistics on ethnic health inequalities in the UK.
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Content ArticleIn this article, Kamran Abbasi, editor in chief of the BMJ outlines the need for reform to the General Medical Council (GMC), which is responsible for regulating doctors in the United Kingdom. He talks about how the GMC received a significant backlash from doctors after its handling of the case of Manjula Arora, a GP who was disciplined for a word she used when asking her employer for a laptop. However, he highlights that the GMC's issues started long before this case, with racial bias, discrimination and an adversarial culture present over the last 30 years. Kamran also outlines measures that should be taken to ensure organisational change and accountability for the GMC.
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Content Article
GMC: Racism in the workplace hub
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in General Medical Council (GMC)
Everyone has the right to come to work without fear of racism. This resource from the General Medical Council (GMC) provides advice on how our guidance principles on non-discrimination apply when tackling racism. Where racist behaviour occurs among colleagues and patients, we recognise the fear that many doctors have of reporting these incidents. It signposts a range of support channels and highlights the duties we expect of doctors in senior positions in tackling and rooting out discrimination where it arises. It includes case studies from doctors and others on their experiences, advice and best practice. -
Content ArticleThis opinion piece in the BMJ by Partha Kar, Director of Equality for Medical Workforce in the NHS, explores racial inequalities in the NHS workforce. Partha is currently leading work on the Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard (MWRES), which aims to challenge trusts and systems openly and transparently about race-based inequalities faced by NHS doctors.
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Content ArticleRacism is unacceptable and it has no place in health and care. But we know that it exists and that the impact on staff can be devastating. All registered professionals have responsibility under the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Code to challenge discriminatory behaviour, creating an environment where people are treated as individuals and with dignity and respect. This resource is firmly rooted in our professional Code and it is designed to support nurses, midwives and nursing associates, providing advice on the action you can take if you witness or experience racism. It also supports those in leadership roles to be inclusive leaders. This document provides practical examples of how, as nursing and midwifery professionals, you can recognise, and challenge racial discrimination, harassment, and abuse. It also highlights other useful resources and training materials that will support you to care with confidence. This document is a resource for individuals at all levels. This resource does not replace existing NHS England policies and procedures for speaking up and managing racism. It is a resource to support best practice in line with organisational policies and procedures.
