Nursing Live: Michelle Cox talks of ‘career defining’ racism case
Posted 14 November 2023 - 09:00
Michelle Cox, who won her tribunal against NHS England, told of the psychological toll of discrimination and called for meaningful action to tackle racism
The nurse who won a landmark employment tribunal case against NHS England (NHSE) for racial discrimination has said her experience was both ‘career defining and career ending’ as she called for more progress in tackling racism by people in power.
Exclusion and discrimination took ‘psychological toll’
Michelle Cox joined NHSE in May 2017 as a continuing healthcare manager and a year later was appointed the regional lead to the chief nursing officer’s black minority ethnic (BME) strategic advisory group in the North West and was the only black nurse to be employed in the NHSE North region.
Her 2023 tribunal heard how she was excluded from team awaydays, was not informed when white members of her team were promoted without due process and was excluded from recruitment processes for senior posts in her team despite being a senior manager herself in a band 8 role.
‘The impact of my NHS employment tribunal is that I don’t trust many people,’ said Ms Cox speaking at the RCNi Nursing Live event in Liverpool on Friday 10 November as part of a panel discussion. ‘I’m still trying to find my feet.’
‘What happened to me has been career defining and career ending,’ she said. ‘I was absolutely stuck. Would I want anyone else to go through what I did? No.’
Ms Cox, who now works as an equality, diversity and inclusion consultant, said that being professionally excluded in an organisation had taken a psychological toll, especially given the time most nurses spend at work.
‘Feeling part of things is just a basic human right – we often spend more time in the NHS than with our families,’ she said.
Landmark case is ‘a call to action’ for real progress on race equality in the NHS
While she said her own future looked brighter now that she could speak up about how she feels without any restrictions, she said she was concerned about the future of nursing.
‘We haven’t made the progress that we should have done. Look at the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard data and do something about it – no actions came out of it.
‘We have report upon report with staff saying what is wrong, but we need those in positions of power to make those changes.’
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust’s chief nurse Karen Bonner said: ‘Michelle’s case is a call to action for all of us to do something different and not continue doing the same.
‘We haven’t fixed the problem and we need to keep talking about it until we do. Everyone, as an individual, needs to do their part.’
In other news