Over the past few decades there has been much controversy over how the NHS is being run, and how there is discrimination, both through gender and race, in most areas of the organisation. In this literature review I am going critically analyse various journals in order to give a strong understanding on how the NHS could be seen as racist as well as the steps they are taking to combat racism. The NHS has been subject to increasing amounts of criticism regarding its discriminatory hiring processes and hierarchy as awareness of discrimination and equality has increased. There are many academic journals which substantiate this opinion as there is lots of evidence to suggest that the NHS are an inherently racist organisation. It has been argued that rather than there being a lack of ethnic minorities in the NHS’ workforce, there are unequal opportunities for staff who consider themselves minorities (Carnall, …show more content…
In a 1997 British Medical Journal article titled ‘Tackling racism in the NHS’, this theory is discussed thoroughly. Additionally, in this article, the hiring process is greatly scrutinised, with the author coming to the conclusion that it is a discriminatory process. As general practices within the NHS are classified as small businesses and therefore were not affected by the Race Relations Act. This meant that many NHS organisations have not conformed to the implemented rules of the act (Kalra et al, 2009). This particular journal is useful as it offers a clear insight into how the NHS used to operate, and an obvious comparison to more recent sources can be made to see how many changes have been made to combat racism. Some changes that are suggested in this journal are those