NHS must tackle racial discrimination against staff and patients, report says

NHS is a great Institution and over the last 30 years I have had an amazing career and done various leadership roles and met a lot of wonderful people from all walks of life. I have done a lot of work on racism and given advice to the GMC, Manchester Metropolitan Police, DOH, BMA and many others on racism and its impact on staff well-being. Many good leaders have taken some of my advice and have made changes, many have ignored me. I have come across a lot of glass ceilings and people in very powerful positions who talk the talk but don't walk the walk and do not want to see any changes. Many of these leaders are nice people, always smile and say the right thing, produce wonderful documents but in reality nothing changes some actively make sure nothing is going to change.

There is a close correlation between BME staff in the NHS and patient safety and staff well-being. The relationship is simple. Michael West has clearly demonstrated that Happy staff - happy patients. BME staff are 3 times more unhappy in our NHS. They are more often bullied, harassed. victimised, discriminated, not promoted, not supported to do training and not rewarded properly and disciplined more often and severely. So gradually they lose interest, caring and compassion and they just do a job. This puts patients at risk. Many BME staff are under stress, demoralised and some are frightened even to raise concerns about patient safety or their own well-being for the fear of intimidation. One has to look at what happened to BME Whistle Blowers whose lives are destroyed and many struggle to find jobs.

Then there is club culture and old boys network, racism and sexism and NHS appoints many poor leaders on the basis of these cultural issues. Many doctors are trained to be leaders and many do bad job as leaders. Most of them are not bad people and in fact many are good clinicians and good people but simply not good enough to be leaders. Many good doctors with potential to be leaders are not appointed because of their race or gender.

Most of the time discrimination is subtle and subconscious/unconscious. As it is subconscious even those who discriminate are not aware of it. They are good people. It is prejudices of good people that is the fundamental problem in this country and more so in the NHS. Be it discrimination in day to day life, be it exam results, be it disciplinary action, be it promotions or clinical excellence awards. Poor leaders fail to tackle poorly performing doctors for a long time and these doctors keep on harming patients. Patients suffer.

This article is timely and hope this will wake the conscience of some good people and they recognise their own prejudices and make sure that the NHS has good leaders who promote good culture and all staff are looked after well so that NHS can be a great Institution both for patients and for staff irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity or place of qualification.