London: Despite serious efforts across the world, racism is still a menace and rears its ugly head from time to time.
In a shocking incident of “institutional racism”, nurses at a hospital in the UK tied a Sikh patient’s beard with plastic gloves, left him in his own urine and gave him food which he could not eat, according to a report in The Independent.
The male patient complained about the discrimination in a note on his deathbed, but no action was taken against the nurses, according to a dossier made available to the British online newspaper by a whistleblower from Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
Multiple counts of alleged racism against nursing staff and patients were mentioned in the report.
NMC, the UK’s nursing regulator, has launched an investigation into The Independent’s report following a claim by a senior NMC official that the regulator has failed to address “institutional racism” for 15 years.
“Nurses accused of tying a Sikh patient’s beard with plastic gloves, leaving him in his own urine and offering him food he couldn’t eat for religious reasons were allowed to carry on working despite the man complaining about discrimination in a note on his deathbed,” the report said.
“In the case of the Sikh patient, the case was initially closed by the NMC’s screening team. According to a source, NMC staff members responsible for deciding whether to pursue an investigation failed to properly consider responses to the note, left by the patient and discovered by his family after his death. The note, written in Punjabi, claimed nurses had laughed at him, kept him hungry by only offering food which they knew he couldn’t eat and not responded to his call bell, causing him to wet himself and fall in his own urine,” the report added.
There was no other detail of the patient or the hospital.
