Nurse Tito Vicario says, in the two years he has worked at Sunderland Royal Hospital, he has been racially abused by patients multiple times. <\/p>\n
“Whenever I feel like it’s going to happen again I feel my heart racing,” he says.<\/p>\n
The abuse is often verbal but, in extreme cases, he says he has been physically attacked.<\/p>\n
“There are times where some patients will try to punch you or slap you,” he says.<\/p>\n
“It affects you not just physically but mentally as well.”<\/p>\n
In one incident Vicario, who is originally from the Philippines, was on the receiving end of a highly offensive racial slur. The patient’s mortified family immediately apologised but the damage had been done, Vicario says, and such experiences leave him feeling powerless, anxious and nervous.<\/p>\n
On another occasion, he says he was racially abused by a female patient who refused to take medication from him.<\/p>\n
“They try to say these things to release their anger and anxiety but we’re not punching bags, we’re still people,” he says. <\/p>\n
“You can’t hit back, just smile. <\/p>\n
“You just take it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurse Tito Vicario says, in the two years he has worked at Sunderland Royal Hospital, he has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-584589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}