Being called a “dirty foreigner” should never be part of anyone’s job description. Yet for many NHS workers, it increasingly is.
A survey by the Society of Radiographers has revealed a disturbing rise in racist abuse directed at healthcare professionals. Staff report being called “monkeys”, being told to “go back” to where they came from, or being refused by patients simply because they are not white.
One Asian sonographer said the abuse had become noticeably more common over the past 18 months. Patients openly complained that “people are coming over here, taking our jobs”, and she blamed “the media and certain political parties” for creating an environment where people now feel comfortable saying such things aloud.
That should concern everyone.
During the same period, immigration has become the defining issue for parties and campaign groups such as Reform UK and Restore Britain. They are entitled to argue for lower immigration, tougher border controls and changes to asylum policy. Those are legitimate political positions in a democracy.
But political rhetoric does not exist in a vacuum.
When migrants are repeatedly portrayed as the source of Britain’s problems, when the language of “taking back our country” and “stopping the invasion” dominates headlines and social media, it is hardly surprising that some people begin to view anyone who looks or sounds different with suspicion or hostility.
Neither Reform UK nor Restore Britain can fairly be held responsible for every racist patient who walks into an NHS hospital. There is no evidence that either organisation encourages people to abuse healthcare workers.
However, it is equally difficult to ignore the testimony of frontline NHS staff who say that increasingly aggressive public debate has coincided with patients becoming more openly racist. When those working on the front line identify a cultural shift, policymakers should listen.
The abuse described in the survey goes far beyond disagreements over immigration policy. One patient allegedly refused to let an ethnic minority sonographer examine his pregnant wife. Another reportedly refused an X-ray because “black people frighten me”. One healthcare worker witnessed a colleague being called a “monkey”. These are not political opinions. They are acts of racism.
That raises an uncomfortable question.
Should someone who racially abuses NHS staff retain the right to choose who treats them?
The NHS already makes clear that abusive behaviour is unacceptable, and in non-emergency situations organisations can refuse treatment or remove patients from services where staff safety or wellbeing is threatened. Emergency care, quite rightly, remains available because doctors and nurses have ethical duties that extend even to those behaving appallingly.
But perhaps the balance has tipped too far in favour of protecting abusive patients rather than the staff they victimise.
Nobody would expect a shop assistant, bus driver or restaurant worker to tolerate repeated racist abuse without consequences. Why should doctors, radiographers, nurses and healthcare assistants be any different?
A patient who shouts racial abuse at staff should, where it is clinically safe to do so, lose the privilege of choosing their clinician or even be required to seek treatment elsewhere for non-urgent care. Hospitals exist to heal people, not to provide a captive audience for bigotry.
The overwhelming majority of NHS staff simply want to care for patients regardless of race, religion or politics. Many came to Britain to fill chronic workforce shortages. Many others were born here and know no other home. Yet they increasingly find themselves treated as outsiders by the very people they are trying to help.
Britain has every right to debate immigration policy robustly. It has every right to argue about border security, asylum and integration.
What it should never accept is the normalisation of racism against the people who keep its health service running.
If political rhetoric is contributing to an atmosphere where prejudice feels easier to express, leaders of every party should reflect on the consequences of their words. And if patients choose to racially abuse NHS staff, they should expect consequences too. Respect is not an optional extra in healthcare—it is the minimum standard any civilised society should demand.
