NHS must pay a nurse £40,000 after boss told her 'bleach your skin'

NHS must pay a black nurse almost £40,000 after her boss told her ‘bleach your skin white so patients would be nice to her’

•  Adelaide Kweyama was initially awarded over £25,000 when she sued the NHS 

The NHS must pay a black nurse almost £40,000 after her boss told her ‘bleach your skin white’ so patients would be nice to her, according to a new tribunal ruling.

Adelaide Kweyama was initially awarded over £25,000 when she sued the health service for racism following the shocking comment.

But in a fresh ruling, a tribunal has ordered the NHS to pay her a further £13,375 in compensation.

Now the nurse, who is originally from South Africa, will receive a total of £39,088 following the latest compensation hearing.

Ms Kweyama was shocked by the comment she received from the senior nurse after she reported having been racially abused by a man she was treating.

The NHS must pay a black nurse almost £40,000 after her boss told her ‘bleach your skin white’ so patients would be nice to her, according to a new tribunal ruling

Ms Kweyama, who was working as an agency nurse at an immigrant removal centre in Heathrow, was also racially abused by a group of male detainees in a previous incident

Ms Kweyama, who was working as an agency nurse at an immigrant removal centre in Heathrow, was also racially abused by a group of male detainees in a previous incident.

An employment judge criticised NHS bosses’ response to the incident, describing it as an ‘absolute abdication of the positive responsibility on managers’.

Ms Kweyama successfully sued Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust for race-related harassment and victimisation.

An employment tribunal held in Watford heard that Ms Kweyama worked as an agency nurse between November 2017 and February 2019, regularly carrying out shifts as an agency nurse at Heathrow immigrant removal centre.

The centre houses around 600 male immigration detainees from a wide range of countries pending their removal from the UK.

The detainees receive medical treatment from the Trust staff prior to being deported, the panel was told.

In January 2019, there was an incident in which Ms Kweyama was racially abused by a group of detainees who were waiting for their medication to be administered.

The nurse told them to come one by one for their medication and to close the door and was then racially abused.

Ms Kweyama told the tribunal: ‘[The detainees] started calling me n****r, monkey, and started making monkey noises and dog noises, demanding to come in at the same time.’

When she reported the incident, ‘overworked’ NHS managers failed to keep her updated on its progress.

The following month, Ms Kweyama was attending to a detainee who was racially abusive to her and pretended he could not speak or understand English.

When Ms Kweyama raised the issue with her senior nurse she said she was told: ‘You need to get a pool of bleach to bleach your skin so that you come back tomorrow white and the patient will be nice to you.’

Later on that day, the same nurse was overheard talking to another colleague and saying: ‘I do not care, let her go and bleach her skin, I

am sick and tired of people coming to work and said they are not well.’

A few weeks after the incident, Ms Kweyama emailed her agency, Athona, and told them she was unable to work at the Heathrow centre any more because she had ‘become very depressed… and needed time to recover psychologically and emotionally’.

Ms Kweyama complained that she had ‘suffered racial abuse,’ the NHS Trust had ‘done nothing to support her,’ and that she had suffered a ‘withdrawal of employment as a result,’ the panel heard.

In the same month, she was told by an NHS manager that her contract was being terminated because the boss was ‘concerned about the claimant’s mental health’ because ‘some words used in her statement were worrying.’

The tribunal concluded that the nurse had indeed been the victim of race-related harassment and victimisation when she was told to ‘bleach her skin.’

Ms Kweyama was also victimised by her boss for the same comments and when she was told her agency role was being terminated, the tribunal ruled.

Her compliant of direct race discrimination however, was dismissed.

Ms Kweyama said: ‘The whole incident was handled atrociously…

‘I was expecting support and reassurance from my nurse in charge whilst I was verbally abused by a patient, but I was appalled to get second abuse from her as my colleague telling me something that I cannot change.

‘I was born black I will live black and I will die black – what is wrong with being black?

‘I felt very insulted, discriminated, bullied, harassed, and abused.

‘I was dehumanised in front of my colleagues, I am now going through a lot of stress and has impacted on my health, it is unbearable, it is emotional and psychological.’

The latest compensation figure Ms Kweyama received was to help cover her loss of earnings caused by the racism.

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