Just prior to COVID-19, my Trust's new people officer was looking for support in a range of executive ambassador roles, I expressed an interested in becoming an ambassador for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff.
This week I received a message from a newly qualified nurse whom I had met when she was a student nurse. She asked to meet with me to discuss our approach on ‘BAME and microaggression’—a term that I had not previously heard. As an individual who had been at the receiving end of microaggression, she asked me if I would be willing to engage in a reverse mentorship approach.
I have previously written about reverse mentoring (Foster, 2019) and found that, while most of what is published about the subject reflects on how it enables engagement with younger staff, one trust introduced a reverse mentoring programme to give senior managers genuine insight into what it was like for frontline BAME staff (Stephenson, 2016).
So what is microaggression? Microaggression is defined by Derald et al (2007:273) as ‘brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of colour because they belong to a minority group’.
Writing for the King's Fund, Ross (2019) stated that as a ‘woman of colour’ she felt ‘uncomfortable talking about race’ in case she was ‘judged for it’. She went on to explain that following the call for shared lived experiences, as part of a review into inequality, people got in touch with ‘ugly stories’. Experiences described as ‘othering’ (ie treating someone as intrinsically different or alien to oneself) or microaggressions were shared. These microaggressions could come from patients and colleagues:
‘There's the feeling that sometimes you're not understood, or you're treated maybe a bit differently … Or sometimes there could be comments made about your culture, your food, languages you might speak or where you've lived, where you've grown up. There might be some microaggressions going on … and they happen constantly …’
‘… patients really can be difficult. I mean, recently I had a patient who told me that I was the wrong colour to be English.’
Tracie Jolliff, Director of Inclusion at the NHS Leadership Academy, reflected that ‘deep work’ is needed for NHS leaders to understand and address discriminatory practices (Jolliff, 2019). She believes that ‘a good starting point is making it safe to talk openly about discrimination and exclusion and follow up by making changes grounded in that valuable knowledge.’
The House of Commons ParliReach Network (2020) has published examples of case studies to share their learning from establishing a reverse mentorship scheme for BAME colleagues. They cite some useful objectives that I feel could be transferred to the health sector:
The blog from Jolliff was an uncomfortable read—she advocates that once safe spaces and organisational processes have been established, leaders can then apply themselves to lifelong learning, continually asking themselves how to listen to the experiences of those impacted by discrimination and exclusion. So as I arrange to meet for my first reverse mentoring session I will be considering: