Ethnic minority doctors twice as likely to face discrimination

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NHS doctors from an ethnic minority background face a worse working experience than their white colleagues and are almost twice as likely to have experienced discrimination at work from a manager, team leader or colleague. This is according to the inaugural Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard (MWRES) report, which indicates that urgent action needs to be taken by NHS trusts, medical education institutions and regulatory authorities in England to address the inequalities that still blight the medical profession. The Workforce Race Equality Standard was launched in 2015 to document the different experiences of white and black and minority ethnic (BME) staff in the NHS, and to provide guidance on how trusts and clinical commissioning groups can achieve race equality. In her foreword to the report, NHS chief people officer Prerana Issar says: “The starkest evidence of the disadvantages faced by BME doctors in the NHS was laid bare by the tragic deaths of doctors due to Covid-19 infection during this past year. “This launch edition of the MWRES dataset honours their memory, as it marks the start of the strategy to bring all the stakeholders together to root out racism and discrimination among doctors working in the NHS. Besides, getting the strategy right for these doctors could shed light on how to tackle race inequality faced by other workforce groups in the NHS.” The first report, covering 2020, finds that discrimination still persists despite ethnic minority representation in the NHS workforce (41.9%) far exceeding representation in the general population (14%). Ethnic minority doctors across all grades are more likely than white staff to have experienc