Nurses of Colour launch Racism Reporting Tool to track NHS racism

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Nurses of Colour (NOC) are a network of Nurses who identify as People of Colour in the Nursing field; we also encourage students, care assistants and allies to join us in creating an anti-racist workforce and health service. We are members of Nurses United UK; a grassroots network made up of Nurses and supporting Nurses.

Register for the Anti-Racism rally here

Over the past 12 months, we have been successful in ensuring that issues that affect our profession and our patients are centre stage. From Nurses safety in relation to PPE shortages at the start of this pandemic through the use of our safety tool, documenting the life and death of every single healthcare worker during the course of this pandemic with our memorial and creating a safe space for ‘Nurses of Colour’ to discuss the specific issues we face. Nurses United are also centre stage in the current fight for a pay rise for nurses after over a decade of real-terms pay cuts and alongside this the importance of addressing the race pay gap which again highlights the discrimination and disparities faced by ‘Nurses of Colour’.

Join us on Wednesday 17th March at 7pm when we launch our ‘Racism Reporting Tool’ for healthcare workers and the public to contribute to and call out every act of racism that sadly ‘Nurses of Colour’ continue to face on a regular basis. We have guest speakers Zarah Sultana - Coventry South MP, Thenjiwe McHarris - Movement for Black Lives Activist (NYC, US) and our very own Esther Akinpelu (Paediatric Nurse, Nurses of Colour).

The reflections many of us undoubtedly went through last year with racism being raised in the mainstream consciousness brought with it a sense of change being possible. This is our chance as a workforce to demand the change we deserve and create a safe and anonymous way for us to highlight the issues that are currently swept under the carpet. We need to put the racial trauma faced by our profession under the spotlight in order to force our workplaces to move from simply monitoring the injustices to actually forcing these unjust practices to come to an end.

We will be launching our ‘Anti Racism Framework’ at the event detailing some of the solutions our network have been working on collaboratively with Nurses United allies over the past 6 months.

Together Nurses United Uk and Nursing Notes were able to highlight the disproportionate rates of deaths amongst our colleagues at the start of this pandemic and we never again want to be in a position where some of our members feel they have no choice but to work on covid wards so as not to put their visas at risk. Anyone that feels they are being treated differently because of the colour of their skin will have a safe place to report these incidents and we will support them to highlight these injustices and bring about a real change wherever they are based in the UK.

Register for the Anti-Racism rally here