The NHS is not in a crisis of racism

The Society of Radiographers have said racism is rising in the NHS.

They give the example of a patient refusing a chest X-ray from a black radiographer, saying ‘black people frighten me.’ Other anecdotes cite patients calling healthcare staff ‘dirty foreigners’ or ‘monkeys’. The Society of Radiographers says the problems have got worse in the past 18 months. They blame ‘increasingly hostile public attitudes’, and single out ‘nationalist movements such as Operation Raise the Colours’. They offer no evidence for that.

Their published findings are neither large enough nor systematic enough to establish a trend, but at first glance they chime with a recent survey that is: the NHS Staff Survey, sent annually to 1.5 million NHS staff. Among respondents, it finds the proportion who report experiencing discrimination over the past year from patients and relatives to be 9.26 per cent. We’re told that’s a five-year high.

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James Hanson