Paediatric Imaging... A Black British nurse gets a white patient ready for imaging, but many intolerant whites refuse to be touched by non-whites. Photo Courtesy SoR
ON THE WARPATH -VIOLENT RACIST WHITE BRITONS SHUN TREATMENT FROM NON-WHITE MEDICS
By SHAMLAL PURI,
Senior Editor, UK & Associate Publisher
West African Nurse Aminata will never forget the day when an angry white British patient lunged at her at a British hospital as she was taking his blood pressure, twisting her arm. She was thrown violently to the ground as she lost her balance.
Her fault? She was the wrong colour, and the white patient did not want to be touched by her.
This broke Aminata’s heart. Though her birth name means good-mannered and trustworthy, she felt unwanted in a country where she was providing life-saving services to patients irrespective of their colour.
These patients forget that even the NHS nurses and medics are not just people in uniform; they too have to be given their dignity for the life-saving jobs they are doing.
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), which runs the UK’s main hospitals, once the envy of nations around the world, is fast turning into a war zone as racist white patients refuse to be treated by non-white medics attacking them. These medics are recruited from around the world, including mainly Commonwealth countries.
NHS staff have been called “dirty foreigners” and “monkeys”, other derogatory terms and disturbingly xenophobic comments, in an openly noticeable and, without doubt, unacceptable and sinister rise in racism from patients across the health service, a shocking recent survey has found.
The Society of Radiographers (SoR) has noted in its damning report that over the past one and a half years, there has been a growing, ugly trend reflecting very poorly on the racist behaviour of white British patients – which SoR calls unacceptable and unconscionable.
This is bound to rock the UK’s reputation as a nation of a rainbow of colours, with people from various parts of the world, to its foundations.
These racists openly flout NHS warnings.
NHS England maintains a zero-tolerance policy on racist abuse: – No Abuse, No Excuse – towards personnel who hail from different parts of the world, including the former British-ruled countries which today form the Commonwealth: Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, South East Asia. Added to these are medics from Turkey, Eastern Europe and the European Union (EU), where English is not their main language.
Since Britain’s exit from the European Union, many doctors from the EU have left, but some have stayed on.
Medical staff in Britain reported many instances where white patients explicitly refused to be seen or treated by Black, Asian and other ethnic minority healthcare professionals.
Angry patients abused these medics using racial slurs such as “monkeys” or “dirty foreigners” and questioned their professional competence based on the colour of their skin.
The SoR said its members noted some White patients have refused to be treated by non-white staff.
The report noted several incidents of hatred.
One worker said: “Some patients always complain because of the colour of skin of people attending them.”
One radiographer spoke of “patients describing healthcare staff as dirty foreigners”.
And another said: “I have witnessed a colleague being called a monkey by a patient.”
A sonographer reported that a white man refused to let a black sonographer scan his white pregnant wife, saying: “I don’t want anyone from any ethnic background touching my woman.”
Paul Awah, a Bedfordshire-based Diagnostic Radiographer originally from Nigeria, says: “Patients claim not to hear what I’m saying, or say they can’t understand me. English is the only language I speak, and I believe I’m clear enough when I’m speaking to patients.
“It’s happened to me on two different occasions, when the patient is looking at me quite clearly in terms of my skin colour.”
Mr Awah is skilled at cannulating patients, and colleagues will often call on him to help with particularly awkward cannulations. On three separate occasions, patients have then said to him, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?”
“I was stunned,” says Mr Awah. “They’re saying, ‘If somebody who’s Caucasian has tried and failed, how dare you bring a Black man now?’ On what basis do they think I’m unable to access their veins?”
Mr Awah agrees that racism has increased in recent months. “It’s definitely got worse – people are more expressive now,” he says. “What used to be something people wouldn’t say – now the rhetoric has changed. Immigrants are blamed for the cost of living, energy bills, the worsening situation in the country, and people feel it’s okay to say it.
“Some of us get used to that kind of stigmatisation and subtle racism. It’s actually quite frustrating, to be honest. I came here to support the NHS, and I’m making vital contributions, working very, very hard because we’re not entitled to any public funds. Working that hard and then being seen as a parasite and part of the problem with this country is really not right at all.”
At the height of the Brexit crisis, two Western European medics were shouted at by White British patients: “Wait till we kick you out of Britain after we leave the European Union.”
Sadly. Some of the non-white staff see this happening so often that they just accept it as something they had to put up with as part of their job.
An Asian diaspora sonographer in the British Midlands said several patients have openly told her, “This country isn’t the same, with all those people coming here and taking our jobs.”
She said such incidents were becoming “more prevalent”, blaming the media and certain political parties, where people openly express such views without thinking.
It is no secret that the Reform Party, which openly bases its politics on racial discrimination, has given native Brits an open licence to express such views. It plays the race card so openly that little is left to the imagination of white Britons.
Reform is vying to win the next General Election mainly on the immigrant and racism card – issues that many white Britons are enamoured with, who once spoke clandestinely and in hushed tones, now openly support and generate hatred through their comments in the media.
One Asian patient in London, who did not wish to be identified, said when he was travelling in an ambulance bus transporting several patients to their local hospital, a senior citizen white woman sitting next to him was complaining about foreigners who had “swamped Britain”.
She moaned that many of the doctors and nurses at the hospital where they were going were black and she hated to be touched, let alone treated by them.
The Asian patient told her bluntly, “Unless you have a death wish and one foot in the grave, go ahead and don’t be treated at all. Why are you wasting precious resources of the NHS? Go home and wait to die.”
The cowardly white female patient shut her mouth.
Caribbean Nurse Yvonne still recalls the day when, on her rounds of the ward, she was punched hard in the stomach that she landed on the floor, spraining her arm. She had only gone to ask how her patient was feeling after taking his medication.
Another nurse, from Eastern Europe, working at a hospital in the Midlands, was spat at for no reason other than she was not British and the patient could not understand her accent.
Nurse Annette does not feel comfortable when she is alone on the rounds of her hospital ward. There is always the inbuilt fear of unprovoked attack or verbal abuse because she is black.
Not only nurses but also auxiliary staff are treated badly. Mohammed, a security officer, had worked at a London hospital for many years and was very polite to everyone he met, but one day a patient kicked him in the jaw and broke his teeth. He could not understand the reason for this unprovoked attack.
Rightly so, the hospitals say, “We don’t tolerate verbal or physical abuse,” adding that offending patients “could be blocked and prosecuted.”
On their part, nurses say they work in the hospitals to help and not to hurt patients.
It is not only Black and Asian medics who are abused and attacked; even in some situations, white doctors and nurses are also attacked by angry patients, but these are rare cases.
In a poster by the NHS East Kent Hospital University, a White child says emotionally, “My daddy is a nurse. Please keep him safe at work.”
Another poster with an innocent White girl pleads, “My mummy is a doctor. Please keep her safe at work.”
Theo, an African diaspora professional, in the NHS appointments department at a London hospital, recalls the day when, in no uncertain terms, an angry white patient barked these words: “I was told to go to the jungle where I belong.”
Little do many white Britons know that many African countries are developed with modern structures, education, etc. It shows how many White Britons are backwards in their thinking and almost illiterate.
One patient ridiculed a radiographer’s headscarf, saying they couldn’t understand her mild Yorkshire accent. Another patient refused to be X-rayed by a black radiographer, saying “Black people frighten me.”
The Society of Radiographers surveyed members about their experiences of racism at work. One respondent said: “Some patients always complain because of the colour of skin of people attending them.” Another spoke of “Patients not acknowledging you but directing questions to your junior.”
Some cases were even more overt. One respondent spoke of: “Patients describing healthcare staff as dirty foreigners,” and another said: “I have witnessed a colleague being called a monkey by a patient.”
A sonographer of Asian diaspora working in the Midlands says that several times, while she’s been conducting a scan, the patient has commented along the lines of, “This country isn’t the same, with all those people coming over here, taking our jobs.”
And, in the sonographer’s department, a white man refused to let a sonographer of colour scan his white pregnant wife, saying: “I don’t want anyone from any ethnic background touching my woman.”
On another occasion, a patient arriving for a chest X-ray refused to let a Black radiographer conduct the X-ray, stating that “Black people frighten me.”
And a white British Therapeutic Radiographer, working in Yorkshire, says that a patient in her department made racist comments to multiple members of staff. His comments included telling a radiographer he couldn’t understand what she was saying. The radiographer in question has a mild Yorkshire accent, but was wearing a headscarf. On another occasion, he made an inappropriate joke about a different radiographer’s headscarf.
The Therapeutic Radiographer says: “When I spoke to him, he said the staff here didn’t have the right diction. I told him we don’t choose our radiographers by how they speak – we choose them based on skill.
“What upset me the most is it hadn’t been reported to me – I just happened to hear the staff members talking through it. I felt it had happened to them so much that they just accepted it as something they had to put up with.”
Dean Rogers, executive director of industrial strategy and member relations, says that no NHS employee should have to put up with racism in the workplace. “The rise in incidents of racism over the last year and a half is unconscionable and unacceptable – and it’s a poor reflection on us as a society,” he says.
“The NHS has a diverse workforce – which is one of its strengths. We are clear: discrimination, harassment, racism, bullying or intimidation – whether expressed verbally or in behaviour – is unacceptable and has no place in the NHS.”
The SoR has been working with other healthcare unions to create new NHS staff standards, published this month, which hold trusts to account for incidents of racism.
The SoR is now calling for the NHS to record incidents of racism and monitor how they are dealt with, working with trade-union partners to ensure this is done effectively. There are currently no guidelines for what should be done once an incident of racism is recorded.
Approximately 21 per cent of the NHS workforce are non-British nationals, and around one in four radiographers who are registered with the Health and Care Professions Council trained overseas.
The SoR therefore wants to see a more developed programme for inducting, orientating and integrating new staff, whether they have moved nationally or internationally.
In addition, the SoR will provide training for its reps, so that they can uphold the new staff standards with confidence. “Racist behaviours undermine patient care and go against our shared values of integrity, equity, courtesy and openness,” says Mr Rogers.
“We want commitment and clear accountability when it comes to addressing anything that makes the NHS an unsafe environment in which to work. Together, we want to ensure that the NHS is safe, inclusive and proud of the diversity that makes us stronger.”
There is no doubt that every nurse and doctor of whatever colour is extremely good in their jobs.
The venom and xenophobia that white Brits are spreading show their own frustration and lack of education and understanding of the cultural wealth of those serving in the NHS and the United Kingdom at large.
There are dangerous days ahead, and without doubt, unless nipped in the bud, it would definitely get worse if not controlled.
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