Filipino nurses in the UK have welcomed the move of recording ethnicity properly on NHS and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) databases.
This was celebrated by many on social media including the Filipino Nurses Association UK (FNA).
FNA founder Francis Fernando said on Twitter that this was a “historic moment” and added that the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) team had driven the move and FNA had been campaigning for the recognition of Filipino and Filipina as its own ethnic group “for many years now”.
With this, Filipino staff can identify themselves on the NHS Electronic Staff Register (ESR) and on NMC records during the revalidation process.
By March 2021, nationality data from the House of Commons showed that people from the Philippines made up the third largest group of NHS staff in the UK, behind only Indian and British, with 25,423 Filipino staff recorded.
