Racist Patients

Nurses Relations

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Our floor is culturally diverse. We have employees from all walks of life. We recently had a patient on the floor that said that he only wanted white nurses to take care if him. I'm not sure if our manager obliged, but I think that its never ok, also I personally just wouldn't think about this when I'm in pain or in need. Its crazy. Also I have been noticing that certain patients make comments to try and relate to me or assume that I know certain things because I'm AA. A patient said to me today,"My lipgloss be poppin.." singing a song that he thought he was relating to me by singing. Or a patient said to me " Do you eat collards and fried chicken". :eek: Little comments like that. I correct them and brush it off. I have too many other problems in my day to worry about this. Also, I should say that I reside in Ga. Is it just me?

Specializes in Med/surg. ED. Palliative. Geront.

I am amazed that people have gone out of their way to accomodate stupid, racist requests. Surely that only makes it worse and more prevalent...

A patient says they dont want a black/white/green/fat nurse and the hospital says "okey dokey'.

The patient goes home and tells their family and friends about it and then it's "I only want a 5 foot 3 inch redhead green eyed nurse with a welsh accent and a wooden leg...on the left side."...and they'll expect the hospital to bend over backwards every time.

Stupidity and ignorance should not be catered to.

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The intent of the person requesting a nurse of their own race is not questioned when they are non-white. It is seen as a cultural imperative. Maybe just maybe they want someone who is native english speaker?

Yeah I know more likely they feel being sick gives them a pass on rude behavior.

There must be a lot of requests for young nurses....

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The funny thing? I've heard of patients doing something like this before and asking for ONLY African American nurses ... this being said, the only AA nurse that was on for that night was so disgusted by the request that the door was shut, a few words were said (by the AA nurse to the patient), and after that shift the patient never made that request again.

I know the nurse, so she didn't have the situation affect her nursing care, but I'm sure there was a *bit* less compassion used.

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That is SO wrong. Its against the law!! If I were you, I would make copies. Keep records. You need to report it, do you have a corporate office? Its best to start there. Then if you have ANY trouble with your job(intimidation, write ups ect) you would have grounds for a lawsuit. There is NO reason ANYONE should be treated like that. And its against the law!!!! Please dont settle.

I agree, however, I dont know what to do about it right now, each of the techs I work with are going through the same thing, and everyone is pretty afraid of loosing their job, I have decided to put in another application in a more diverse area were I can grow within the field of nursing and to have the ability to work within a union state maybe this way I will at least have some type of protection.

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Specializes in LTC, Acute Care.
I am an AA and I have experienced some of the racial stupidity in my 7 years in nursing. The usual remarks tend to trend towards the patients referring to me as that "colored" nurse or the Black woman and even the "negro" lady.I always get the hair comments too because I do not straighten my hair and wear it in various styles and pts always want to play in my head to see if it's real and question why I might like my hair so "nappy". I have experienced worse, yet I have found that me getting ignorant and nasty right back at the person doesn't help the matter. I treat all of my patients just the same and let them remain the way they are cuz I can't change them especially if they have been brewing in ignorance for 40-80 years. I have enough work to do.

You are so right about not being nasty to them. My thinking is that while I cannot change how people treat me; I can change/control how I react to them.

On the other hand, I seldom get comments or sneers from the non-black patients about my hair because they usually like it and think it's just the neatest thing (I have shoulder length locs BTW). Surprisingly the negative comments about my hair have come from black patients; but that's for another thread.

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Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
do your job and make sure u volunteer in aa community to help folks who truly appreciate it.

Because people who are of different races don't "truly appreciate" help?

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I am an AA and I have experienced some of the racial stupidity in my 7 years in nursing. The usual remarks tend to trend towards the patients referring to me as that "colored" nurse or the Black woman and even the "negro" lady.I always get the hair comments too because I do not straighten my hair and wear it in various styles and pts always want to play in my head to see if it's real and question why I might like my hair so "nappy". I have experienced worse, yet I have found that me getting ignorant and nasty right back at the person doesn't help the matter. I treat all of my patients just the same and let them remain the way they are cuz I can't change them especially if they have been brewing in ignorance for 40-80 years. I have enough work to do.

I'm so sorry that you have to deal with hurtful comments like that. But out of all of the posts here that I read, you hit the nail on the head....about treating all people the same. That's truly what nursing is about. We cannot change years of ingrained prejudice...we can't CHANGE anything about anyone...we can't change our patients and we can't change our co-workers.....we're lucky if we can change things about ourselves! But it makes us a lesser person and a much lesser nurse if we let other people's ignorance distract us and keep us from giving the best care we can, regardless of the patient's flaws. As you said, we have enough work to do. Those people will have to answer for their behavior someday just as we will have to answer for our own.

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I too work in good ole Georgia right outside of the very diverse Atlanta; but I started my nursing career in upstate New York and it's the same both places. Let the pt. have their "White Nurse" little do they realize in some areas nursing is becoming more minority because White RN's tend to go higher up the ranks and more of the floor nurses are minorites. Pretty soon when these racist bastards the shouting about wanting a "white nurse" there won't be one-- you know the D.O.N or a manager is NOT gonna step back down to work the floor just to take care of a racist, no insurance having jerk !!!

I just wanted to say that I don't think that the rising # of minority floor nurses is because whites tend to go higher up the ranks. The number of minority nurses is on the the rise, however there are more white nurses in managerial positions because there are more white nurses (about 87% of RNs are caucasian). According to minoritynurse.com:

  • 11% of black nurses have master's or doctoral degrees, compared to 10.4% of Caucasian nurses and 8.4% of Hispanic nurses.

A higher number of minorities is still going to be less than the majority.

Men are also a minority in the nursing profession, but are rising in numbers. Would it be fair to say that women tend to move up in the ranks while men work the floor?

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The intent of the person requesting a nurse of their own race is not questioned when they are non-white. It is seen as a cultural imperative. Maybe just maybe they want someone who is native english speaker?

Yeah I know more likely they feel being sick gives them a pass on rude behavior.

There must be a lot of requests for young nurses....

They obviously haven't learned that those for whom English is a second language can speak it better than the native speakers.

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I remember when I did home care and the elderly would call my agency and specifically request and I kid you not "a Caucasian, ENGLISH speaking aide"! Well that narrowed it down to 3 Caucasian English speaking aides!

I would have loved to say try a different agency.

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I was told in a class that men are over represented in the management level of nursing. Most of the men in my nursing school had plans to go directly to management as fast as possible, just not that interested in hands on. As for white females that represents their experience as nurses. There is certainly no advantage to getting in to nursing school or being hired especially if one is monolingual. 87% of nurses are not caucasian because one out of four nurses are educated in India or the Philippines unless those countries are alowing caucasians to go to school there,which I doubt.

LelaRN should can the attitude about the "no insurance having" patients. That is including more and more people and not her role as a nurse to examine their financial state, unless facilitating care by finding affordable solutions. Try being kicked to the curb by the insurance companies for a disability and then have to take attitude and lack of care from nurses of any race.

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87% of nurses are not caucasian because one out of four nurses are educated in India or the Philippines unless those countries are alowing caucasians to go to school there,which I doubt.

Do you have a source for this? All the info I've found shows much lower #s, like this one (PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Out of an estimated 2.7 million U.S. registered nurse workforce in March 2000, 3.7% were internationally educated nurses from other countries) and this one.

Oh, and I found this thread right here on allnurses.com that addresses this issue.

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