Responding to difference

Case Study 2: Albert

Albert is worried about the number of foreign people giving care to his wife saying that
they would not understand her needs. He lacks clarity and confidence in the foreign
healthcare workers and believes that without more of his racial people his wife won’t
recover because of his cultural identity biasness and probably racism. Albert could also
lack education and be illiterate about healthcare policy, and his action looks like he has
discrimination against foreign staffs. According to Ina Grau et.al, people from
individualistic background are possibly more used to being concerned with personal
attitudes, feelings or evaluations and might also be prone to have a particular response
about their personalities.

In 2014, NHS England and the NHS Equality and Diversity Council agreed action to ensure
employees from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds have equal access to career
opportunities and receive fair treatment in the workplace. All NHS staff have the right to
be treated fairly, equally and to work in an environment that is free from discrimination.
This is enshrined in the NHS Constitution which has a contractual status.
The WRES provides guidance to the NHS on how to achieve better race equality in the
workforce. NHS Improvement will seek to work in partnership with NHS trusts to help
embed the WRES and to seek continuous improvement on this important agenda.
Workforce race equality will help make the NHS more efficient, more productive and more
responsive to the needs of patients and staff alike. (Ed Smith – Chair NHS improvement)

People needs to be treated with kindness, respect, and compassion; therefore, I will
attend to his needs and help him to understand how well the foreign staffs are equipped
and reliable, avoid making assumption and help him recognise diversity while still
respecting his choice by balancing the number of foreign staffs with people from his
country.
References

Kemmelmeier, M. (2016) ‘Cultural differences in survey responding: Issues and insights in

the study of response biases: CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN SURVEY RESPONDING’,
International journal of psychology, 51(6), pp. 439–444. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12386.

Grau, I., Ebbeler, C. and Banse, R. (2019) ‘Cultural Differences in Careless Responding’,
Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 50(3), pp. 336–357. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022119827379.

Kline, R. et al. (2017) NHS workforce race equality standard. 2016 Data analysis report for
NHS Trusts. NHS.

Salway, S. et al. (2016) ‘Obstacles to “race equality” in the English National Health
Service: Insights from the healthcare commissioning arena’, Social science & medicine
(1982), 152, pp. 102–110. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.01.031.