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Loveness says she has experienced racism while working as a nurse. She’s not the only one
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Loveness says she has experienced racism while working as a nurse. She’s not the only one

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When Loveness Tsitsi Mauwa started her first job in a New South Wales hospital as a nurse, a colleague told her that there was a template for career success in the hospital.
“She said I had to get ahead, you have to be young, white and beautiful. And at that moment it was not logical for me,” said Mauwa, who was born in Zimbabwe and came to Australia on a skilled employee visa, to SBS News.
But when she stayed in the sector longer, she realized that the template existed. In the following decade, Mauwa applied for various possibilities to continue her career, only to discover that she often did not come into the final phase.
“I did issue some applications, and in one of the applications I was promised that I would get a chance, but that chance never came. But all others who had applied the criteria could claim,” she said.
Mauwa said that the level of racism and discrimination she had experienced from colleagues drove her full -time nursing.
As one of the critical sectors that are confronted with a labor shortage, the federal government has given a priority to visas for nurses in the competent migration system.

Mauwa said that she lived and worked in the two decades in Australia, she has seen the workforce becoming more diverse, but there are still barriers.

Two -thirds of the nurses and midwives from a culturally and linguistically diverse background in NSW have experienced racism at work, according to a new report from the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association.
More than 3,000 members of the nurses were examined for the report. 64 percent said they had immediately experienced racism of staff or patients.
The report calls on employers to ensure that all the staff is complete the promotion of bystanders. Other recommendations include prioritizing the elimination of institutional racism; policy and training on incident reporting; And monitoring the effectiveness of co-designed anti-racism training.
An anti-racism round table will now be held to form policy and to tackle systemically racism.

The general secretary of NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association, Shaye Candish, says that the trade union has launched a partnership to ensure that the progress is made.

“It will be chaired by the Human Rights Commission, and we will have participants of governments, from employers, from the Union, of the interest groups of all stakeholders involved in this collaboration,” said Candish.
“Unfortunately, the reality is that racism is a perverse problem, and it is really a layered and complex problem. It will cost a lot of work and dedication of organizations.

“But it will also take a collaboration of all our organizations, because there is no simple solution, and there is no organization that can repair this itself.”

‘Racism makes people sick’

“Simply put, racism makes people sick. Racism stops people who are sick to get better, and racism makes people who are sick worse,” he said.

He said that the nurses’ report “shows that the recommendations, and our framework, which fully matches the recommendations and their report, must be implemented”.

A man in a corridor, with a serious look on his face.

Rasisdisrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman says that racism is an emergency for public health. Source: MONKEY / Mick Tsiks

NSW Minister of Health Ryan Park says there is a robust anti-racism policy, but individuals have to work together to ensure that they are implemented.

“If people do not feel safe, they do not feel culturally safe, in our institutions, then the health results are also worse,” Park said.
“Racism is not only offensive, it can have serious adverse consequences for the health and well -being of people – both in terms of our staff, but also just as important our patients.”
For Mauwa, an important step is to eliminate the barriers she says she stops with culturally and linguistically diverse employees to go up in their career.
“I think the health system is happy if we (are) just work on the floor, but do not want to continue to management or senior roles.”

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