Celebrating Inclusivity in Nursing & Midwifery With One Of The UK's Greatest-ever Nurses

Meena Sebastian,
Chief Sales Officer

Recently I attended the London South Bank University (LSBU) Dame Elizabeth Anionwu Annual Lecture, ‘Celebrating Inclusivity in Nursing and Midwifery’. The lecture commemorates Dame Elizabeth, declared as one of the 70 most influential nurses and midwives in the history of the NHS, receiving countless honours & awards for her work. Upon retiring from the nursing profession, she has focused on the impact of Covid-19 on Black and Asian communities, recently becoming a Pride of Britain awardee and one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the Year in 2020.

The main reason I ended up attending was because of Professor Laura Serrant OBE who I had the pleasure of meeting in 2014 during my time at HSJ at the Inspirational Women Leaders. I remember having a long conversation with the winners on the night and left feeling hugely motivated by the stories of why they featured on the list and was left with warm words of encouragement and support.

Looking back at that moment in time, I hadn’t realised that it would be the start of my own personal journey during my career at HSJ - where I became a working parent and my eyes were opened to how there were many opportunities to drive positive transformational change; both in the NHS and within my own organisation. 

Inspired by the race and equality cause, having launched the first Health Service Journal (HSJ) Award for Workplace Race Equality during my time at HSJ, there was no way I was going to miss this lecture.

It started with an introduction from the amazing Dame Elizabeth, who soon handed over to Laura for a lecture on, ‘Leading through Silences: On Legacy, belonging and the importance of being heard. There was later a Q&A. The lecture was thought-provoking and explored a number of themes around inclusive leadership. Here is what I took away:

1/ Representation

• Being included as opposed to excluded, what isn’t said/shown in the case studies is as what is said.

• Professor Serrant discussed how in the 1990s, social injustice and social inequality were not talked about. She remembers reading ‘Orwell’s Animal Farm’ as a young girl, and remembers one particular part, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. 

• She also told a story of how as a nurse outreach worker, she was once mistaken for being a prostitute by the police. The way in which society labels and treats people based on how they appear was a lesson that she, unfortunately, learnt on a daily basis.

• Professor Serrant shared her story of how she first met Dame Anionwu at the statue of Mary Seacole and how she later went on to become her very own mentor. 

2/ Silence Speaks

• “Being uncomfortable does not mean being unsafe” - Professor Serrant. It is true, speaking up does make you vulnerable, but doing so will make a huge difference in driving change.

3/ Health Leadership

During the wonderful Q&A session with both Professor Serrant and Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, Elizabeth gave the audience some helpful health leadership advice including:

• The frustration with health inequalities is there are too many and you can’t solve it all so best to focus on a few and do them well.

• Most projects she prioritised ticked three things:

  1. Personal - making sure that the project resonated with her values and what mattered to her

  2. Professional - links to her area of expertise

  3. Political - matched with her social justice priorities and making things more equal

• Be on the look for allies and be open to who they may be, as they can be in the most unexpected of places.

As James Brown said, “I don’t expect you to kick the door wide open, I just want you to hold it ajar”.Dame Elizabeth referred to the Jamaican saying, ‘We Likkle But We Tallawah’. It means that we may be small, but we are strong, we are mighty, and can do anything. 

Liz Fenton, Deputy Chief Nurse, HEE and HEE’s Chief Nurse and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Professor Mark Radford announced that they will be launching Dame Elizabeth Anionwu Fellowships with LSBU in November 2022 to support nurses on the programme to develop their skills and capabilities to lead complex change aligned to their organisation's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda.

As Dame Elizabeth said passing the baton to student nurses attending, racism cannot be eradicated but the way that healthcare organisations deal with it has moved forward and is continually evolving…

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For more inspiration, I’d recommend checking out Dame Elizabeth’s memoir, ‘Dreams from my Mother’, which explores how she came to overcome a background of stigma and discrimination to become one of the UK’s greatest ever nurses, and amazingly the first ever sickle cell specialist nurse! And if you’re as passionate as me on this topic, I would also personally recommend the Shuri Network, the first NHS and care network of women from minority ethnic groups in digital health!