NHS trusts must continue to tackle racism

This month my Chief People Officer and I brought a staff story to our Trust board. It detailed how a nurse felt victim to racism and bullying and the consequences this had had. The story had a significant impact on the board as a whole and wider Trust, and resulted in a desire for assurance around the actions that we had committed to deliver to improve to our Workforce Race Equality Standards (WRES) results. According NHS England (NHSE) (2021), although improvements have been made to race equality, no single organisation is doing everything well. There are pockets of good practice across all WRES indicators, but no single organisation is exemplary.

Ford (2021) reflected that the pandemic has provided an unexpected opportunity to accelerate action to improve progress on equality, diversity and inclusion in health and social care. He felt ‘quite positive, as influential nursing figures had told us they believed some progress had recently been made for minority ethnic staff, though they called for an upping in momentum’.