AIBU to think refusing treatment from non-white medical professionals should have consequences?

[MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack]

There has apparently been a significant rise in racism towards NHS staff, with a growing number of people refusing to allow non-white NHS staff to treat them. This is sad but not surprising given the shift in society as a whole towards people expressing their racism much more openly.

https://news.sky.com/story/nhs-staff-experiencing-unconscionable-levels-of-racist-abuse-survey-finds-13569575

I have always admired the commitment of NHS staff who treat all patients with care and compassion, even when those patients are rude and abusive. But if people are actually refusing to let certain staff provide treatment, surely there should be consequences for this?

AIBU to think that everyone has the right to refuse treatment if they so wish, but if a patient refuses treatment from a medical professional simply because they don't like the colour of that medical practitioner's skin, then they should then forfeit the right to receive that treatment on the NHS. So they can either go without or find the money to be treated privately by a medical professional of their choice?

There would need to be signs warning people of the consequences of their choices, of course, but if someone doesn't want a Black or Asian radiographer carry out their x-ray, then fine... they just don't get an x-ray.

I do actually know of a total racist who had a difficult death. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his horrible and frequently expressed views in his care home disadvantaged him.

God are you stil replying to yourself? Put down the wine, go to bed, it’s only Tuesday.

several years ago I was in a car acident.

The report that came from the Doctor was that it happened in a car park. It didn't so there are occasions where Drs don't understand English.

Are there any cases of black patients expressing a preference of being treated by a black practitioner? If they did , I would feel quite sympathetic to it.
So that suggests there may be some reasonable base for people preferring to be treated by someone they feel comfortable with ie of their own race,

I was surprised and a bit offended to be offered the choice of a GP at my Health Centre. Race or sex didn't occur to me as possible reasons, but I imagined that some poor soul had turned out to be seen as having an unpleasant personality. Anyway, I don't want to add to the woes of a (most likely) competent professional by piling on to their unpopularity, so I always accept whoever is first available.

Bless you 😂

I would be curious if in the case of midwifery people would prefer midwives from the same culture (accepting an overlap with ethnicity)? Often I have seen maybe first generation immigrant women be quite trepadatious about giving birth as they are aware of racism within midwifery staff and also acutely aware at this most initmate , profound and medically fragile juncture they would want someone culturally sensitive? In such a case I can see why a woman may have a preferred staff group monitor the birth.

I think this is a valid point and will patients be less prone to bring assertive in care of they accusations of racism. If you have a non white doctor who simply is sub standard will patients be less likely to complain for fear of being labelled racist or will staff dealing with the complaint not investigate thoroughly due to an unconscious bias of 'racist patient'. In fact with such a high proportion of ethnic minority health care staff I wonder if there may be a culture of assuming white people are all a bit racist as another form of unconscious bias.

Another point.

Patients are disproportionately elderly and if we are dealing with an 80 year old.they were born in 1946 and their informative years would have been in a nearly pure white society with a prevailing ex colonial mindset. I know this is unpalatable and wrong but could you excuse an elderly trial white person to simply feel.more comfortable with a white doctor because of their upbringing and an unfortunate maintenance of out datrd social attitiudes?

Will you stop going on about dying like dogs. Leave the dogs alone they've done nothing wrong.

Btw, you are missing the point. I don't believe people shouldn't be able to refuse treatment. The argument is if you refuse treatment based entirely on your racist assumptions about a medical professional then the NHS shouldn't have to bend over backwards to find you an alternative of a more preferable skin tone. Not that hard to understand

A psychopath I am not- I assure you of that. However, I have the right to feel strongly or passionately about something. Oh, and I am Mediterranean white. If racists people refuse treatment then they choose to suffer or die- good for them then. Good for the world, too.

I doubt there is a psychopath born that recognises it.

Oh so no English speaker ever makes a mistake? Good to know.

Don’t forget that “thick accent”, “issues communicating” ,”struggled to understand them” is also considered racism sometimes

It is indeed, @ChalkOutlines - we've already seen it on here time after time - and for me this is where the lack of nuance starts to matter

In the (perfectly justified) determination to stamp out racism there's rarely a suggestion as to what patients who experience this are supposed to do ... accept they won't know what's wrong with them? Risk being called racist by asking for another HCP? Something else?

It doesn't even need to be a "foreign" HCP; some British accents can be almost impenetrable too, and IME asking if they might speak a little slower rarely works, at least beyond a sentence or two

So since true racism is very obviously wrong and also communication is key, what exactly is the answer when too many fling the accusation willy nilly - and worse, may well be the very ones keen to get themselves into positions to judge such things?

I agree. Especially with "strong" regional accents of white people too. Especially for those with hearing aids, or elderly/confused people. Clear communication is a basic requirement in any kind of "vulnerable" setting, regardless of nationality or skin colour.

My daughter is a junior doctor, being white, she is in the minority of her cohort. That doesn’t mean the non white doctors aren’t British, they are and they also trained in UK universities.

Yup, my DH's haematologist is of a different ethnicity. He's been "under her" for nearly a decade but her communication is still very poor. Made worse because of their monthly consultations being by phone. He'd been telling her of severe pains in his thighs for months, almost a year, but she just glibly fobbed him off, saying it can't be anything to do with his cancer! A couple of months ago, he told her it was so bad he couldn't walk anymore. So she made him a face to face appointment, and he had to literally point to his thigh where the pain was and she suddenly went into "urgent" mode, arranged an immediate x-ray and next day MRI scan, followed by an urgent orthopaedic consultant appointment two days later. Turned out he had fractures to both femurs caused by the Zometa used to treat his bone cancer and needed both to be operated on immediately! That was after month after month of her fobbing him off saying it was nothing to do with the cancer! We since checked him NHS online app, and there are a couple of letters from her to his GP on there, reporting that he was reporting severe pain in his shins!! I was with him on the phone calls when he told her it was his thighs, but she clearly misheard him (several different calls) or didn't understand the difference between thigh and shin! It's very worrying!

Yes, this. DH is not white and English is his third language, but having spent Summers here from the age of two, he is now almost “mother tongue” fluent. As a house officer who was (in his words) “just off the boat” he was posted to all the UK hospitals less popular with established UK trainees. He quickly learned passable Welsh in the valleys, and was then posted to Aberdeen. He loved it, despite being almost unable to communicate with patients because of their lovely thick highland brogue. Then the government of the time decided that all non-EU (note: not non-UK) graduates must take a spoken English test to ensure they could communicate with British patients. How we laughed… (not)

Having “done something” about hcp’s being unable to communicate properly (once, about 17 years ago) the DoH then promptly cracked on with raiding med schools in developing countries without bothering to check the candidates’ written or spoken English, and encouraging a climate of fear around racism to stop the great unwashed asking difficult questions.

I could be wrong but my guess is that it is a problem understanding some foreign born doctors, not the colour of their skin. I work in the NHS and even I struggle to understand some foreign born colleagues I work with.

Even leaving aside the issue of stripping much-needed medics from less developed countries your last paragraph was especially apt, Vinvertebrate

A nursing friend was one of those sent to do precisely this, and on her return highlighted the issue that while many would put our home-grown HCPs to shame, some had never been properly trained in the first place, even - as a PP identified - having "bought" their qualifications

Obviously there are procedures to sift out such folk, but in the rush to get posts filled as cheaply as possible it's hard not to wonder just how rigorously they're applied

You say that like it's a bad thing.

It is, objectively, a bad thing, if we want to live in a civilised society. Most people born before about 1960 would be deemed racist by today’s standards. I’m only 50 and I was taught this it was correct and polite to use the term “colored” rather than “black” - which could offend (I know better now ofc).

I could quite cheerfully dispatch an animal like Rudukubana myself - in my head at least. But I would not want to live in a society where that happened. And I don’t think most people would either, in a rather hackneyed “first they came for the communists” sense.

It is, objectively, a bad thing, if we want to live in a civilised society

You'd think so, @Vinvertebrate, but this is starting to remind me of various Trump threads, where some chortle over his imagined death - and no I'm not a fan either, but I'm also not comfortable with the concept of those whose views I happen to dislike being killed off

Worse still, and as mentioned, I've no doubt these are exactly the people who itch to get themselves on the type of "panels" tasked with addressing such issues

Same and yes.