Nearly half of health care workers have witnessed racism, discrimination, report shows

[Jilly_in_VA]

At a Pennsylvania hospital, a Black nurse said her emergency room colleagues routinely withheld pain medication from Black patients who sought relief from sickle cell disease.

In Montana, a phlebotomist said fellow health care workers often made "ignorant comments" about the hospital's Native American patients.

Both of these accounts surfaced in a report this week from the Commonwealth Fund and the African American Research Collaborative, based on interviews with thousands of workers who shared their experiences at hospitals and health facilities under the condition they not be identified in the groups' findings. Researchers surveyed 3,000 health care workers in what authors described as a first-of-its-kind effort to quantify whether employees see discrimination within their workplace. The five categories of health facilities included hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient care such as urgent care centers, mental health and addiction treatment centers and community or school health centers.

Nearly half of health care workers at these facilities witnessed discrimination against patients in their workplace. Younger and Black or Latino health care workers were more likely than their older or white counterparts to say they noticed discrimination against patients.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/02/15/health-care-racial-discrimination-report/72577444007/

I know this is true, just from my limited experience. I can cite one patient in particular, who had sickle cell disease. Just ask me.