UK nurses tied Sikh patient’s beard with plastic gloves, left him in urine, gave him food he couldn’t eat: Media report

The council has launched an investigation into the newspaper's revelations.

London: In a shocking incident of “institutional racism” in the UK, nurses reportedly tied a Sikh patient’s beard with plastic gloves, leaving him in his own urine and offering him food he could not eat for religious reasons, according to a media report.

Despite the man complaining about the discrimination in a note on his deathbed, the nurses were allowed to carry on working, The Independent newspaper reported last week, quoting from a dossier leaked to it from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the UK’s nursing regulator, which outlines multiple counts of alleged racism against nursing staff and patients.

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The council has launched an investigation into the newspaper’s revelations.

A senior NMC whistleblower claims that the regulator has failed to address “institutional racism” in its ranks for 15 years, warning this has allowed NMC staff “to go unchecked” when “applying guidance inconsistently based on their own discriminatory views”, the report said.

“Nurses accused of tying a Sikh patient’s beard with plastic gloves, leaving him in his own urine and offering him food he couldn’t eat for religious reasons were allowed to carry on working despite the man complaining about discrimination in a note on his deathbed,” it said.

No other details of the man or the hospital were given in the report.

The whistleblower has urged NMC to address an alleged racial bias in how it treats conduct cases against Black and ethnic minority nurses and patients amid claims of “alarming” racism within the organisation, which was first raised in 2008, the report said.