Measuring race equality in the NHS workforce

When we first highlighted the problem of racial discrimination in the medical profession in 1993, we were arrested by the police for making fraudulent applications and accused of professional misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC).12 Over the following decade, we highlighted racial discrimination problems in medical school admissions, handling of complaints by the GMC, and allocating merit awards (subsequently known as clinical excellence awards, which have now been completely reformed).345 In the 1993 NHS it was unusual to see ethnic minority consultants, and there were virtually no ethnic minority people in senior leadership positions.

Over the past two decades, numerous initiatives have sought to address the persistent racial inequalities documented by government reports, think tanks, and researchers within the NHS. A pivotal shift in this effort was the introduction of mandatory reporting through the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) in 2015, followed by the Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard (MWRES) in 2018.6

These standards provide a crucial framework …