A study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that came out on Wednesday found that almost 80% of their patients were racist or treated them badly because of their race.
Asian, Black, and Latino nurses are much more likely than their White peers to experience racist “microaggressions.” They told researchers that patients often use racial slurs or question their qualifications.
The poll also found that six out of ten nurses said they face discrimination from their fellow nurses. Nine out of ten nurses who have dealt with racism or other forms of discrimination say it has hurt their well-being and mental health.
Even though almost all nurses had to deal with racism in some way, few of them told anyone about it. The survey found that only one in four nurses told managers about the discrimination they saw or experienced.
Nurses said that more training on diversity, fairness, and inclusion, as well as more diversity and inclusion in management, would help solve the problems. Eight out of ten nurses said that having “zero-tolerance workplace discrimination policies, clear consequences, and anonymous reporting” would make it easier to keep nurses of different races and ethnicities.
Beth Toner, a registered nurse and head of program communications at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a news release, “As nurses, we need to take responsibility for our own actions and work to change the systems that keep racism and other forms of discrimination going.”
In March and April 2022, researchers asked 980 nurses about their experiences with racism and how they felt about it. These new results come after the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing released the results of a 2022 study of 5,600 nurses last year. In that survey, half of the nurses agreed that there is “a lot” of racism in nursing.
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, there are about 4.2 million registered nurses in the United States. They make up the biggest part of the healthcare field.
