Measuring organizational attittudes to workplace discrimination, prejudice and diverstiy: an exploratory study to assess these factors in public bodies which refer cases to the General Medical Council

Several studies have suggested that ethnic minority and overseas qualified doctors are more likely to be brought before the General Medical Council for both professional and conduct issues. Preliminary analysis of referrals to the GMC suggested that the majority of these referrals come from NHS organisations (for example hospital and primary care trusts). We currently do not know how to reliably identify or assess organisational factors (for instance in corporate competencies for handling equality and diversity issues) which could contribute to such outcomes within NHS bodies.We therefore sought to carry out a literature review to identify instruments which could be used to assess organizational attitudes to discrimination, prejudice and diversity in the belief that having identified such instruments, they could be modified for use in the UK context and specifically in the NHS. Ultimately we hoped that we could use an instrument in the UK which would give an insight into these organizational factors and help the GMC determine if they were relevant when considering referrals. As part of this process, we hoped to carry out a pilot study in up to three NHS organizations in the North West of England using these instruments to assess their feasibility, appropriateness and acceptability. We also set out to identify whether information routinely collected by the NHS could be used to contribute to the organisational assessment of discrimination, prejudice and diversity. The aim of our project was therefore to develop methods to assess workplace discrimination, prejudice and attitudes towards diversity in healthcare organisations for use in investigating how such factors operating at organizational level may affect the identification and handling of concerns about doctors’ performance.