Nursing Narratives – Racism and the Pandemic. Exposed Documentary

Wednesday 22th June

Groundbreaking documentary! Black, brown and migrant nurses and midwives speak about their powerful experiences of racism and the pandemic

 

Nursing and Midwifery Minoritised, Allied Health Minoritised and the Nursing Narratives team are hosting an event where Exposed is showcased for the first time at Sheffield Hallam University. This event will also support the relaunch of both minoritised groups. Event is open to all SHU staff and students. The key messages from this documentary are applicable to ALL our student placement experiences!

Exposed is a groundbreaking documentary that combines the stories of 19 Black, brown and migrant nurses and midwives to speak about their powerful experiences of racism before, during and after the pandemic. The documentary lasts 1 hour and this is followed by a facilitated discussion.

Bring some tissues as guaranteed to be heart wrenching.

Black, Asian and migrant nurses have made a critical contribution to the NHS and social care. The current coronavirus outbreak has laid bare structural inequalities. In the first month of the UK lockdown, 71% of nurses and midwives who died were from black and Asian backgrounds. (HSJ April 2019) In February, a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recognised that the government “does not know enough about the experience of frontline staff, particularly BAME staff”. It asked the government to consider the “extent to which (and reasons why) BAME staff were less likely to report having access to PPE and being tested for PPE and more likely to report feeling pressured to work without adequate PPE”. The October Lessons Learned report recognises that ‘the higher incidence … may have resulted from higher exposure to the virus’, but there is little address to racism in the report.

Nursing Narratives: Racism and the Pandemic has taken a grass roots approach to understand the experiences of black and Asian staff during the pandemic. 354 BAME staff (survey n=308 & narrative interviews n=46) participated in the study, to tell of their experiences of racism at work, both during and prior to the pandemic. 19 nurses and midwives have spoken out about their experiences of racism in the project’s groundbreaking new film, EXPOSED. The majority of study participants did not see racism as individual, isolated behaviour but a structural practice embedded in the institutional culture. This was further exposed in the pandemic with devastating consequences.

The project is funded by the AHRC/UKRI Rapid Response to Covid-19 research call. The project report is available to read and download on the website: https://nursingnarratives.com/report-and-press/

The Nursing Narratives research team:

Principle Investigator – Professor Anandi Ramamurthy, Sheffield Hallam University

Co-Investigators – Dr Sadiq Bhanbhro, Sheffield Hallam University and Dr Faye Bruce, Manchester Metropolitan University

Principle Partner – Dr Ken Fero, Migrant Media

Research Associate – Freya Collier-Sewell, Sheffield Hallam University

https://nursingnarratives.com/

Summary: An Anti Racist Health Service: A Manifesto for Change

The nurses and midwives have collaborated to produce an Anti-Racist Manifesto for Change which is live on the Nursing Narratives website. Individuals and organisations can sign up in support of the manifesto at the website:

https://nursingnarratives.com/anti-racist-manifesto/

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