“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,” Ken Alltucker writes over at USA Today. “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. Among the key findings in the survey: 47% of U.S. health care workers said they witnessed discrimination against patients, and 52% said that racism against patients was a major problem. In addition, employees at health facilities with a higher percentage of Black or Latino patients witnessed higher rates of discrimination. At hospitals with a majority of Black patients, 70% of workers said they witnessed discrimination against patients based on their race or ethnicity. For hospitals with mostly Latino patients, that figure was 61%.” Ken Alltucker, “Nearly half of health care workers have witnessed racism, discrimination, report shows,” USA Today.
