Anti-racist innovation and nurse education

The focus on institutional racism within the Higher Education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom and nurse education, in particular, has so far been seriously lacking in investigation and scrutiny. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act (RRAA2000) has pushed institutional racism to the forefront of debates in public services, including both education and health services. This paper seeks to operationalise some key aspects of the debate over institutional racism and relates it to both these sectors. Based on empirical work funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Wales (HEFCE) Innovations Project, this paper offers nurse education a framework to not only comply with the legal requirement of 'promoting racial harmony' (RRAA 2000) and the expectations from nursing as enshrined in the Code of Professional Conduct (NMC, 2000. The Code of Professional Conduct: Protecting the Public Through Professional Standards. NMC, London), but goes further to consider some key questions for anti-racist interventions.