TY - JOUR
T1 - Employee perceptions of race and racism in an Australian hospital
AU - D'Costa, Ieta
AU - Truong, Mandy
AU - Russell, Lynette
AU - Adams, Karen
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the participants for their time and cooperation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors
PY - 2023/12
Y1 - 2023/12
N2 - Background: Racism contributes to health inequities faced by people of colour and marginalised groups. Despite widespread recognition of the impacts of racism, mitigating strategies and legislation have been largely unsuccessful. Research into racism in healthcare has mostly examined personal experiences of healthcare workers and patients, assuming that the definitions of racism and race are similarly understood by all. However, ethnicity and race are often conflated, and racism seen as primarily interpersonal and ahistorical. Purpose: This paper explores hospital employee understandings of racism, its impacts and how to reduce it. Methods: Forty-nine staff within one Australian hospital participated in individual qualitative interviews regarding the definition, impact, and ways of reducing racism. Interviews were analysed with a reflexive thematic analytic approach using a Postcolonial framework. Results: Participants described racism as being experienced by marginalised groups of people in Australia. They identified that racism has detrimental effects on health and wellbeing. Not all were clear regarding what constituted racism: it was not described as an ideology created to justify colonial distribution of power and resources. Some thought that racism was individual prejudice while others noted it was also structural in nature. Participants commonly defined race as involving physical or cultural differences, suggesting that discredited historical and colonial concepts of race continue in Australian society. While many felt that education was the best way to reduce racism and its impacts, some participants noted that being educated did not necessarily change racist behaviour. Conclusions: The lack of accurate understanding of the concept of race and racism likely contributes to the relatively poor effect of current strategies to combat racism. As an initial part of deeper systemic anti-racist reform, this research supports calls for anti-racist education to clarify the definition of racism as an ideology.
AB - Background: Racism contributes to health inequities faced by people of colour and marginalised groups. Despite widespread recognition of the impacts of racism, mitigating strategies and legislation have been largely unsuccessful. Research into racism in healthcare has mostly examined personal experiences of healthcare workers and patients, assuming that the definitions of racism and race are similarly understood by all. However, ethnicity and race are often conflated, and racism seen as primarily interpersonal and ahistorical. Purpose: This paper explores hospital employee understandings of racism, its impacts and how to reduce it. Methods: Forty-nine staff within one Australian hospital participated in individual qualitative interviews regarding the definition, impact, and ways of reducing racism. Interviews were analysed with a reflexive thematic analytic approach using a Postcolonial framework. Results: Participants described racism as being experienced by marginalised groups of people in Australia. They identified that racism has detrimental effects on health and wellbeing. Not all were clear regarding what constituted racism: it was not described as an ideology created to justify colonial distribution of power and resources. Some thought that racism was individual prejudice while others noted it was also structural in nature. Participants commonly defined race as involving physical or cultural differences, suggesting that discredited historical and colonial concepts of race continue in Australian society. While many felt that education was the best way to reduce racism and its impacts, some participants noted that being educated did not necessarily change racist behaviour. Conclusions: The lack of accurate understanding of the concept of race and racism likely contributes to the relatively poor effect of current strategies to combat racism. As an initial part of deeper systemic anti-racist reform, this research supports calls for anti-racist education to clarify the definition of racism as an ideology.
KW - Health inequity
KW - Hospital employees
KW - Race
KW - Racism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178650101&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116364
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116364
M3 - Article
C2 - 37977016
AN - SCOPUS:85178650101
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 339
JO - Social Science & Medicine
JF - Social Science & Medicine
M1 - 116364
ER -