Abstract
Background: Healthcare workers (HCWs) in the United Kingdom (UK) have faced many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of these arising out of their social positions. Existing literature explicating these challenges (e.g., lack of appropriate PPE, redeployment, understaffing) have highlighted inequities in how these have been experienced by HCWs based on ethnicity, gender or, job role. In this paper, we move a step ahead and examine how the intersection of these social positions have impacted HCWs’ experiences of challenges during the pandemic. Methods: We collected qualitative data, using interviews and focus groups, from 164 HCWs from different ethnicities, gender, job roles, migration statuses, and regions in the United Kingdom (UK) between December 2020 and July 2021. Interviews and focus groups were conducted online or by telephone, and recorded with participants’ permission. Recordings were transcribed and a hybrid thematic analytical approach integrating inductive data-driven codes with deductive ones informed by an intersectional framework was adopted to analyse the transcripts. Results: Thematic analysis of transcripts identified disempowerment, disadvantage and, discrimination as the three main themes around which HCWs’ experiences of challenges were centred, based on their intersecting identities (e.g., ethnicity gender, and/or migration status). Our analysis also acknowledges that disadvantages faced by HCWs were linked to systemic and structural factors at the micro, meso and macro ecosystemic levels. This merging of analysis which is grounded in intersectionality and considers the ecosystemic levels has been termed as ‘intrasectionalism’. Discussion: Our research demonstrates how an intrasectional lens can help better understand how different forms of mutually reinforcing inequities exist at all levels within the healthcare workforce and how these impact HCWs from certain backgrounds who face greater disadvantage, discrimination and disempowerment, particularly during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 105 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | International Journal for Equity in Health |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 23 May 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 23 May 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Data Access Statement
The data for this study consists of interview transcripts of participants thatcontain potentially identifying and sensitive information. The data cannot
be shared publicly due to concerns of participant confidentiality and ethics
requirements. Participants consented to the study with the understanding
that only de‑identified quotations would be made public, not the entirety of
the transcripts. Therefore, only illustrative quotes from the transcripts have
been included in this paper. Data for this study could be made available upon
reasonable request to the UK‑REACH Data Access Committee (uk‑[email protected].
uk), which is the institutional email of the UK‑REACH project.
Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic
- Disadvantage
- Discrimination
- Disempowerment
- Healthcare workers
- Intersectionality; intrasectionalism