Diversity and inclusion in the NHS

[JellySaurus]

I've been visiting a friend in hospital, on a ward where people are so ill that there is at least one nurse present at all times, in every bay of 2-5 beds.

Not a single rainbow lanyard anywhere.

But when the family at the next bed explained to her that they were speaking Hebrew, the nurse immediately asked if their relative would like kosher food.

No need to wear a badge to virtue signal your inclusivity. Maybe when you're busy actually caring for people, you don't mess about - you actually DO diversity, not waffle.

(Sceptic in me wonders what the rest of the hospital is like.)

Thank you - that's the reality we need to remind ourselves that despite the NHS's scandals like dangerous maternity care, medically experimenting on vulnerable gender confused children, regular outing of creeps on the workforce and ingrained dismissal of women's rights to safety and privacy - there are countless empathic professionals focusing on saving lives and healing the sick.

If you have the nurse's name a letter of praise sent to the head of nursing might not only make the nurses day but also give her some protection if she needs it in future.

Hospital staff sometimes get gifts but letters are valued too. My family did a thank you card and fruit basket for one relatives stay - and a complaint about care in a different ward.

The irony - or tragedy to be more accurate - is that it is those most empathetic, caring, efficient, knowledgeable health care professionals who feel most deeply the failures in the service they work for.

They know what good care is, what good evidence-based medical practice is, and I've know HCPs who are heartbroken because they can't work to the best of their skills and abilities in the current NHS context.

Some of the best of the best couldn't take it and left, rather than practise badly, or dangerously. I know this first-hand.

Some of them struggle on, trying to maintain the standards they believe in, and want to uphold, against the grain.

Then there are the others who are just trying to get through their shift, and treat patients as numbers to be 'dealt with' rather than human beings in a vulnerable situation. I've encountered a few of them, unfortunately!

Sadly they are probably the most likely to survive in overworked, badly-managed, poorly-resourced, under-supported circumstances.

If you feel too deeply about it, you'll break.

Good idea about a letter of praise, anyolddinosaur - we have done that, with the request that it be placed in the nurse's HR file.