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.

Not understanding people is a real thing. There’s huge denial about this. I actually think collective sanity is being undermined by calling reasonable responses ‘ racist’. This is why more and more people are numb to being called racist. It simply doesnt matter anymore.

Can you pl point out where anybody on this thread has said that not understanding people is racist? Or do you mean in real life?

In fact @AlisonPi what you said- do correct me if I am wrong as it's a long thread- is that you prefer white doctors because non-whites don't respect you.

My grandmother was definitely not a racist, and she was born in the UK at the turn of the last (19th) century.

Then she isn’t talking about your grandmother, is she.

Racism is completely unacceptable.

When my elderly FIL was in hospital he was treated by staff that he couldn’t understand due to their heavy accents and poor English. That wasn’t ok. If he had complained (which he didn’t, but we identified it when it was happening) he could have been identified as racist. I wonder if there is more nuance here which isn’t coming through in the article.

No, she's trying to justify racism by claiming people can be racist simply because they are old. Which is not true

If your FIL said I can't understand that monkey, or I don't understand that dirty foreigner then I'm quite sure he would be (correctly) identified as being a racist. I'm not sure how much nuance you think there is in calling people those names?

@DeterminedRat

There is no nuance with those awful examples. But the article doesn’t refer only to cases where racist names are used, but to a wider survey where individuals have reportedly experienced discrimination. It would be interesting to see what was reported as discrimination. For example, would refusing to be treated by someone with a heavy accent that an elderly person struggles to understand be discrimination? We can’t know the answer without reading the survey results and also identifying the full context.

Exactly, and some people have said that this applies to cases where an alternative doctor is requested, with zero racist abuse. So the thread isn’t just about that however much people claim it is.

There is.

She didn’t say they were actively racist, she said they’d be deemed racist for using terms like “coloured”.

I personally feel if someone is refusing to be treated by non-white medical staff simply because of the colour of their skin, then it should recorded as the patient refusing treatment end of, and a white practitioner should not be made available to them.

I am 54. I don't know anyone from my generation who thinks " coloured' is the right term. 80 yr olds maybe.

When I was at school in the 1960s and 1970s it was common usage and acceptable to say "coloured". I only learned from mumsnet several years ago that it was offensive. DH is 74 and I sometimes have to remind him that people don't say coloured any more.

!!!!

As a pp said I think people in their 70s and older often do. That isn’t “your generation”. You were born in the 70s, I’m a bit younger than you but so was I. My dad would have said it, he’d be 70 this year. Other people’s second hand anecdotes don’t cancel out my experience.

I am 55. I remember a ward round when I was a medical student in 1994, the consultant was advised by a nurse that she should not use the word coloured. A long time ago!

Also older people are far more likely to need medical treatment.

I don’t know. I imagine she’ll tell me
herself what she was meaning.

The pp who used " coloured' until recently is 50. So def my generation.

She was perfectly clear 🙄

I think the example of someone not being able to understand a HCP treating them because of a strong accent and thus asking for an alternative is an example of a possible grey are, which I mentioned in a previous post.

it could be very obviously because if racism- “I can’t understand that insert racist terminology here, so get me someone else”- is very obviously racist and easily dealt with accordingly. But is “I can’t understand dr w/nurse x/radiographer y/HCA z, so can I see someone else” has the potential to be thinly veiled racism (e.g. they can understand them but want to see someone else so use this excuse) or may be a genuine issue, which could be incorrectly interpreted as racist (especially if you are looking at everything through a prism of suspicion, which is how a heavy focus on this matter is likely to be interpreted- people will fear being seen not to be being proactive or to be ignoring racist incidents).

Or patients might be concerned about raising this, in case someone accuses them of being racist, which is unfortunate.

Again, being someone on the coal face- it’s easy to identify and manage the first scenario. My experience is that these are not all that common, but perhaps this is not the universal experience of all HCP’s and is dependent on factors such as location and specialty. The second scenario is more difficult and I don’t want to be trying to decide/police/interpret that- fraught with danger. I don’t want to deal with the fall out of getting it wrong. So what do we do with it? I don’t think we condone if ignore flagrant, obvious racism- it needs to be dealt with and can be done already. I’m just not sure how we deal with some of the less obvious situations which are open to interpretation.

I grew up in a rural part of the SW and I can assure you that people my age there still use that term.

Whilst working in a law firm in a big city, the partner in charge of DEI sent an email enthusing very genuinely - he was a good man - about the growing number of bright young “blacks” in the partnership. I winced when I read it, and it caused a huge drama amongst POC who said it was an insulting way to describe them.

Partner was mortified having genuinely thought he was using the “correct” term. There followed an email from another (black) partner who explaining that partner #1 had asked for advice on the correct term and partner #2 used “black” in the James Brown sense and loved it.

Language is rarely straightforward..

Although not to you.