NHS staff face ‘unprecedented’ levels of racism from patients
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly99nzqg6xo
Posted by heresmyotheraccount_
NHS staff face ‘unprecedented’ levels of racism from patients
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly99nzqg6xo
Posted by heresmyotheraccount_
38 Comments
> From the 106 trusts which provided data, there were 8,235 such reports in 2024, a 17% increase on the 7,002 reports in 2023.
If you are abusive, verbally or otherwise, you should lose access to NHS services, and be forced to go private.
I hate to say it… But is anyone really surprised with the rise of Reform and so called “Patriots”.
We wouldn’t have an NHS with out a multicultural workforce.
My cousin is a nurse. A patient said he wanted to be dealt with a white nurse so she said fine and just did one. The patient was waiting for a further 30 mins before they were seen to by a British polish* nurse but guess what even that wasn’t white enough. The audacity of the senile rat
Should be escorted out and banned from future treatment, give them a card with a list of private clinics.
Nobody should be experiencing that period.
They can post on gofundme for donations.
Discrimination comes from all sides. I have seen and heard a student Nurse saying ‘gay people are sick in the head’, a group of Nigerian nurses saying their colleagues from Kerala (India) didn’t shower, or a white a lady singing the song “Ten little”(you know the rest) when she saw a black nurse. It’s everywhere, on all levels. Every single day. Unfortunately.
Just another of the insidious knock on effects of the right and Brexit, normalising peoples racism.
I was doing A&E rotation. A patient said he didn’t want a Muslim treating him (I wear a hijab). I informed the consultant – he stated fine he will have to wait. The nurse who was treating him explained as per his wishes the other doctor will see him once they finish with their other patients. He was waiting over three hours. When he complained they told him that the available doctor was someone he didn’t want to treat him so he will have to wait. I must admit I didn’t care how long he waited – he wasn’t an urgent case and quite frankly he could have been sorted three hours earlier. Also I’m not an immigrant- I was born, raised and educated in U.K.
Yeah sadly not surprised. We’re becoming more fragmented as a society thanks to the internet. Division to gain money and power.
Patients are also facing unprecedented racism from NHS staff. Neither should be the case but apparently you can’t expect adults to act like adults any more
Fine then you can go to the imaginary hospital in that field next door.
UK faced with unprecedented used of the word ‘unprecedented’
Never heard the word once until 2020, now it’s a daily headline.
Perfect, the exact type of people we don’t mind not being treated.
Had a nose op a few weeks ago had an amazing chat with a new Pakistani nurse.
These people are precisely the type of migrants we want to attract.
Annoyingly, it comes from both sides in many professions.
Using the true upvote here – not because I like it, but because it’s true and important
Honestly I just want someone I can understand. I don’t care where they’re from, I just have a hard time underatanding what I’m being told through a thick accent and mispronounced words. I think communication and better English language courses would help alot. But with the turnover in the NHS it’d probably be impractical
If patients are racist they should not be treated… Dr’s and nurses deserve respect, and not have to treat racists
Hmm, I wonder if this can be attributed to any sort of fringe populist movement that many media outlets, including the BBC, are giving a disproportionate amount of attention to, which is possibly empowering people to act like this.
Utterly stupid. Racism on its own is disgusting and there is never a valid reason for it. Being racist towards somebody who can potentially save your life in an emergency is the dumbest thing imaginable. I don’t know how nhs staff do their jobs even under good conditions. Knowing that there are some patients who treat them in such a racist way is so sad
I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals recently. Lots of foreign doctors and nurses and…I couldn’t have cared less. They treated me, they helped me when I needed it and they arranged after-care. These people are amazing at what they do and their ethnicity has absolutely no correlation to their ability to do the job.
the other week they linked a mentally ill person’s attack on two jews and a muslim with anti-genocide marches
let’s see if they will now link unprecedented levels of overt racism with the anti-immigrant rhetoric being peddled by the right
The fact that NHS staff are having to put up with this while also dealing with underfunding and burnout is absolutely disgraceful, and honestly, treating racist patients with the same patience they refuse to show others only enables this behavior.
It’s not just the patients though. As somebody that works in the NHS I hear my colleagues being racist and homophobic quite frequently.
They should have the right to refuse to treat them for racist behaviour
As a white British man whose partner came to work in the NHS from Asia at the request of Tony Blair’s government, I feel thoroughly ashamed to read this. I do hope that managers will support their staff when faced with this abhorrent behaviour and not make excuses. If this happened to my partner, I’d be at that hospital without hesitation demanding action. It makes my blood boil.
My partner works for a team of health visitors for babies and new borns. They work in a very mixed race area in Birmingham. Despite being a diverse team, every member was born in England.
The staff are a mix of white, black and Asian women and most now have to very careful when out visiting new mothers because of the abuse they get on the streets, despite the fact they are nurses in uniform. They regularly get abuse in the streets, to the point where some of the team now feel unsafe doing the basic requirements of their job.
A couple have had their cars vandalised as they’ve parked up to go see a new baby, and the team have had to implement a check-in system so that every nurse and health visitor is kept track of so they know they are safe after every visit.
It wasn’t like this a few years ago. It’s really quite sad.
It’s not just white British people, I saw someone of more ethnic background screaming the n word in hospital the other day
Imagine how common this will become if Reform wins the next general election.
Maybe Labour should stop the infighting about which personality they want in number 10, and instead start making a difference to people’s lives, so that voters will choose Labour instead of Reform.
Absolutely disgraceful, but not unsurprising. Whilst this is clearly a result of both Brexit and reform giving people a sense of superiority, I’m convinced that the internet has made it 100x worse. People now say out loud, things they’d only have said online 10 years ago. And it’s getting worse. It’s like people no longer bother with a filter. Also, the hateful nature of politics and the media over the last 10-15 years has had a huge effect.
You can disagree with someone’s religion, or whatever, but it’s none of your business at the end of the day, and if someone is actively opting to help you get better, then you have to be thick as pigshit to not accept their help. But i guess thats what’s being magnified now.
My colleague from Bolivia (healthcare assistant in London) got reported by a lady for filling up his water bottle, saying she doesn’t want foreign peoples germs near the water dispenser. She then went on a rant to my manager about how he looked Chinese and thus “inherently carries viruses”.
I’ve got a friend who’s a breast cancer surgeon. She was born here but her parents are from India
She’s had people complain they can’t understand her accent (which is “neutral” from the south east), ask for a doctor who speaks English natively (which of course she does), ask for a white doctor and even ideally a white male doctor
These are people getting surgery for cancer! Interestingly she said a lot of the time it is the husbands of the women undergoing treatment making these demands and not the patients themselves. Sometimes the patients have apologised or tried to get their husbands to stop as they’d happily be treated by her
Ambulance anecdotal. I semi-regularly have elderly white patients complain that once at hospital they’ll probably be seen by some black/coloured/foreign doctor. I always tell the patient that without BAME staff the hospital would literally be forced to close down.
I’ve also learnt to steer away from politics every time I’m told I’m not paid enough or the NHS is misused, because far too often their follow up will be “Reform will sort it out” (reality: they want to destroy it) or “too many foreigners using it” (reality: 80% of NHS resources go on the predominantly white over-65s)
The public is also more openly anti-LGBT post-COVID. I had a (white middle aged) man rant to me about the fact the hospital was flying a Pride flag last year as I cleaned vomit and urine off my stretcher. Again, good luck running a hospital without the gays.
Was staying on a ward and had a lovely chap in the next bed shouting he was a reform voter and didnt want to be touched by non-English people and how all the immigrants are going to be sent home and all that.
Consultant (white dude) closed the curtain and gave him such a talking to.
Sent the fucker home after.
Make it like football stadiums, if people are racist then disqualify them from free health care. Make them pay in the future. Sure why would they want someone from another country helping them anyways if they hate them so much.
Is it problematic if I wanted to see a doctor I could understand when they speak English?
When my consultant was on holiday I saw a west African man with a very thick accent. I couldn’t really understand him and just nodded along in a consultation room.
See it all the time. Even seen it from my parents who aren’t overtly racist, but under pressure their true colours come out.
‘Not saying all the foreign Drs don’t know how to do their job, but those foreign Drs aren’t helpful and don’t know how to do their job’, or speaking in a condescending manner to staff who speak English as a second language, that kind of thing.
The level of casual racial discrimination from people who don’t know how lucky they are is astounding.
Given most of the staff can’t communicate in English even .
Easy: sanction anyone who does this so they can’t receive NHS care.
Introduce a maximum voting age of, say, 65, so that we can repeal the triple lock and start making them pay for the disproportionate NHS care they receive, due to their being the unhealthiest ever demographic.
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