NURSING NARRATIVES - Racism and the pandemic

This research will use storytelling as a methodology to develop our understanding of the impact of discrimination that BME nurses have experienced during the Covid19 crises. It will consider how this compares to their previous experiences of working in the NHS and their vision for a more equitable future. The project aims to collect direct testimonies from nursing and support staff to present detailed personal accounts of their experience both during the crisis and historically. The emerging discourse on the diverging impact of Covid19 by ethnicity has focused on pre-existing co-morbidities, cultural differences, possible genetics differences. While socio-economic factors have been referenced with comments on 'pre-existing inequalities in health and healthcare', there has been little address to questions of implicit and explicit racialised discriminations. It is however crucial to develop our understanding of the impact of racism. Feb 2020 BMJ special issue on Racism in Medicine highlighted continued inequalities and discrimination faced both by service users as well as staff in the NHS. Critical Race Theory suggests experiential knowledge, critical consciousness and centring research in the margins are essential strategies to further our understanding of structural inequalities. (Delgado & Stefancic 2017) Using an arts based approach that centres emotion as a resource for memory and recovery we will enable nurses to recount their experiences, visualise their traumas and those of communities worst affected by the crisis, and recognise their experience and insights as a crucial asset in creating significant change with which to support the building of a more inclusive society and a more equitable NHS capable of delivering the best patient care.