A nurse was left shocked after she was told by her boss to ‘go bleach her skin’ so she could get better treatment from white patients.
Adelaide Kweyama had reported being racially abused by a man she was looking after when she overheard the comments from a senior nurse.
An employment tribunal heard that while working as an agency nurse at an immigrant removal centre in Heathrow, Ms Kweyama suffered racial abuse from a group of male detainees.
She had been treating a man who racially abused her and pretended he could not speak or understand English.
However, when she reported the incident she was told by a superior: "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 senior 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 saying 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'.
She also 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.'
But after her contract ended, Ms Kweyama successfully sued her employer, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust for race-related harassment and victimisation.
The tribunal concluded that Ms Kweyama 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.
However, her complaint of direct race discrimination was dismissed.
A month prior to the incident, Ms Kweyama had been racially abused by detainees who made monkey noises and used racial slurs.
She told the panel: "[The detainees] started calling me n****r, monkey, and started making monkey noises and dog noises, demanding to come in at the same time."
Ms Kweyama then raised an electronic incident report about the incident but NHS managers failed to keep her updated on the progress of her complaint and did not tell her what steps had been taken to minimise the chance of such an event happening again, the panel heard.
An employment judge considered the Trust's response to the incident to be an 'absolute abdication of the positive responsibility on managers'.
A remedy hearing will be held at a later date.
