Licensed Nursing Assistant Patti Green just notified me about a strong piece she’s written about a widespread and little-discussed problem: racial discrimination against direct-care workers in long-term care and the role management plays in allowing it.
“Under the guise of resident/patient rights, aides of color are constantly victims of resident harassment and disrespect. Management bars these aides from caring for said residents - and this leads to resentment and bad morale among all the aides,” she writes in The Quiet Discrimination.
This is an issue that everyone who cares about the quality of direct-care jobs needs to be aware of. As Patti said in her email, this industry-wide pattern of discrimination is “an important issue and one more reason why many aides just leave the work.”
Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org
Thanks so much Patty for shinning your special light to a very real challenge in long term care.When leaders like yourself begin to raise these issues others will soon listen,so please continue make our(dcws) heard. John
The sad fact is that too many workers in this field do not have the skills needed to perform the job and are allowed to work anyway. This gives people the impression that it is an unskilled job and it is allowable to treat us with less respect.
I agree