The COVID-19 effect that no one's talking about.As well as decolonising the curriculum and removing racial bias from medical training, important changes need to be made in terms of representation at a board level. “In London, almost half of NHS employees are black and ethnic minority, but 92% of NHS Trust Board members are white,” notes Dr Elfaki.This white-centric approach was also shown as recently as the Covid-19 pandemic.
It has been over ten years since the Department Of Health announced that they must “give even greater prominence to race equality”, with a "systematic action plan" to increase representation at the top tiers of the service to 30 per cent BME. It’s clear they have failed in this objective spectacularly.
It also found that BAME staff were twice as likely to enter the disciplinary process and BAME nurses take 50% longer to be promoted compared to white nurses. “You may see a lot of black and brown faces at the bottom, but you can’t let it lull you into a false sense of security because these people aren’t in positions where they can make changes or influence the system,” says Dr Elfaki.
Three black women tell us how to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement that goes beyond posting an Instagram imageThree black women tell us how to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement that goes beyond posting an Instagram imageNyome Nicholas –Williams, Stephanie Yeboah and Ateh Jewel For Abi, however, racism is still a reality of her everyday workplace - not just from patients, but from colleagues, too: “When the protests were taking place after the killing of George Floyd, a senior member of medical staff was leaving comments on Facebook that were anti-.” The comments included, “Can we just not have our street names changed to Mugabe Ave or Zambia Way. Thanks!" on a politician's public page.