Ethnic origin question in form - NHS England: A Ca...

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Ethnic origin question in form

Ndevi profile image
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I visited the NHS walk in centre today (@ Coventry), was wondering why they ask the patients ethnic origin in the form which you are supposed to fill out before being told to wait for the clinician. Any clues ?

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Ndevi
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Yes possibly one clue. Believe it or not, some drugs have differing effects according to ethnicity. It can affect how efficiently a particular drug will help your condition. Knowing, ahead of consultation, makes prescribing the right drug easier for your GP.

Trustar profile image
Trustar

If ethnicity is needed for medical treatment then why limit the ethnicity to the narrow and non-medical categories. The ethnicity codes and tick-boxes used by NHS are Self Defined Ethnicity (SDE) codes which are a set of codes used by the Home Office across the UK to classify an individual's ethnicity according to that person's self-definition.

It has no medical use. Data used in medical studies are often from non-UK sources and each have their own ethnicity coding. Most patients do not record their DNA heritage which is medically significant but answer with a best approximation to ethnicity. For example, a person with a black parent and a white parent will usually record their ethnicity as black.

Ethnicity codes are used by the NHS for allocating funds to equalise access and use of the NHS.

The NHS often hides or does not offer the final category which is 'NS – Not Stated'

This lack of openess and honesty forces people to make a choice they would not always make if they know all the options.

The NHS needs to respect patients choices and offer them complete information.

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