Black History Month: Why we should celebrate achievements

I personally don’t get excited about Black History Month as I probably should do, because I wish Black History would be celebrated all year round, not just for one month.

I would like to see everyone getting excited and wanting to learn about Black history – not just Black people celebrating and attending various events in the month of October.

Furthermore there’s a limited mindset that it’s all about food and music, but there’s a lot more to Black people than that. So if we must celebrate Black history in one month, it should be about the achievements of Black people.

The history of Black people is intertwined with British Royal Family all the way back to the 18th century with the marriage of King George III to Queen Charlotte who is believed to have had African ancestry.  Anyway, one can be forgiven to think Meghan Markle was the first descendant of Black people in Royal family. 

We are well known sportsmen and women, but we are also inventors – like Patricia Bath, an American ophthalmologist who invented laser cataract surgery – but it’s not talked about. Another inventor is Gladys West whose mathematical modelling was instrumental in the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS) that is used daily around the world. Black history and achievements are not represented in schools – if our children are not seeing it, how can they be inspired?

I joined the Trust’s Kofoworola Abeni Pratt Fellowship that launched in March of this year. This fellowship is to empower staff and to address our Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) data which shows that only 1.25% of the senior leaders (Band 8a and above) are from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds which is truly not a reflection of the population we serve. 

Despite being a nurse, I had never heard of Kofoworola before. History tends to look back at nurses like Florence Nightingale, and in more recent years Mary Seacole. However even then Mary isn’t always portrayed as someone to look up to. I am so proud she is celebrated at Guy’s and St Thomas’.

I am inspired by a family member who is a nurse in Belize, even though she’s semi-retired. I’ve always looked up to her. She used to wear a white uniform and I used to think ‘wow’. She loved nursing and hearing her stories as a child really inspired me.

I originally wanted to get into biomedical science but I am too talkative to be in the lab. I did a masters in reproductive and sexual health research and was led to rethink my options and take up a career in nursing by the doctors and nurses who were also on the course.

 I have stayed in women’s services ever since and proactively recruit women from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds into clinical trials. Evidence suggests that these women are less likely to volunteer to participate in research for a number of reasons.

There are lots of Black people who continue to inspire me, like footballer Marcus Rashford.

He’s young with lots of money, and could be minding his own business but instead his campaign to end food poverty among children forced the government into a U-turn on providing millions of free meals. He comes from humble beginnings to where he is today and he is inspirational to others.