Racial Harassment, Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Quit: Evidence from the British Nursing Profession

Abstract

We investigate the determinants of perceived racial harassment at the workplace, and its impact on job satisfaction and quitting behaviour among ethnic minority nurses, using data from a unique large–scale survey of British NHS nurses. Nearly 40% of ethnic minority nurses report experiencing racial harassment from work colleagues, while more than 64% report suffering racial harassment from patients. Such racial harassment is found to lead to a significant reduction in job satisfaction, which, in turn, increases nurses’ intentions to quit their job. These results are found to be robust to endogeneity concerns, and have important policy implications for retaining qualified nursing staff in the NHS.