A nurse has spoken out about how she was racially abused two days in a row while she went about her job at a Swansea hospital. Nurse Omobola Akinade, originally from Nigeria, first arrived in Swansea in 2005 and has worked in a wide range of roles at the hospital, most recently moving to the gastroenterology and stroke ward.
In 2021, while she was carrying out her duties at work, she said she was racially abused by a patient she was trying to help. At first she thought and hoped it was a one-off, but when it happened again she knew she had to make a stand. To get the latest WalesOnline newsletters e-mailed to you directly for free, click here.
“A patient was deliberately racially abusive to me and then repeatedly said it again the next day,” she said. “When it happened to me the first time I thought maybe it was a one-off but it happened again the day after. When it comes to abuse, because we’re all under a lot of pressure, we tend to just carry on. But when it happened to me on the second day I thought, ‘I’m not going to take this anymore’. I went home and reflected and thought nothing was going to happen about it and I thought I needed to speak out and talk about it."
