Ethnic minority staff felt “vulnerable” during pandemic, says senior leader
BMJ 2022; 378 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1715 (Published 11 July 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;378:o1715
Healthcare workers from ethnic minority groups have felt “vulnerable” and uncared for during the covid pandemic, with some reporting that managers hid personal protective equipment from them and refused to carry out the required risk assessments, a senior nurse has said.
Speaking at the NHS Race and Health Observatory conference at BMA House on 7 July, Felicia Kwaku, chair of the Chief Nursing Officers Black and Minority Ethnic Strategic Advisory Group, shared some findings from her discussions with thousands of ethnic minority staff since April 2020.
“This is the stark reality of what some staff went through. Some died in their rooms on their own because of social distancing. Some couldn’t get to the phone because they were so hypoxic, so they died alone,” she said. “If you were a nurse or midwife who was new to the country, you didn’t have a lot of the networks, so it was very isolating.”
Kwaku, associate director of nursing at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, added, “Many staff failed their FFP3 mask fit tests because the dimensions of the mask didn’t fit their faces. These masks were designed around the white male face. If you had slightly different features, a different shape of nose or mouth or jaw, you didn’t fit it. And if you don’t fit your mask you may be at increased risk.
“Remember the risk assessments? When they first came out they didn’t really take ethnicity or disproportionality into consideration. So many staff felt vulnerable because they didn’t feel that the risk assessment was for them. Many didn’t have the risk assessment done because managers refused to do so and some staff told us that managers hid PPE.
“There was also a policy that if you were 28 weeks pregnant you could go on maternity leave, and many ethnic minority staff told us that this rule didn’t apply to them in some of their workplaces.”
Filipino healthcare staff
During the same panel discussion, Joron Jimenez, a committee member of the Filipino Nurses Association UK, spoke about the struggles facing Filipino staff.
Jimenez, who spent 20 years in the NHS before moving to work as a nurse lead (pre-operative assessment) at the Cleveland Clinic London, volunteered to work on a 24 hour hotline for workers and their families set up by the association during the pandemic.
“We got calls from the families of those people who were self-isolating, because they couldn’t ring us themselves. They would say, ‘My husband is self-isolating in a hotel. He was sent there by his trust because he is symptomatic. So, what can we do? We can’t buy food.’ We started providing them the basics of living. And then, after that, one by one, we couldn’t get hold of these self-isolating people, because unfortunately they had passed away.”
Jimenez also spoke about his own experience of moving to the UK and joining the NHS. “When I first came here I didn’t have any network to support me, I felt on my own. I felt discriminated against, incriminated, and bullied, and I didn’t have anybody. It was to the point that I nearly killed myself,” he said.