Being a member of BAME in Paediatric Physiotherapy
My name is Diana Banjo
I have worked as a Community Paediatric Physiotherapist for Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust for over 18 years. I currently work 3 days per week as a Children’s Rapid Response Respiratory Physiotherapist and 2 days per week as a Children’s Neurodevelopmental Physiotherapist. I love my role and working within a large NHS Trust.
In my respiratory role, I support the respiratory needs of children with severe complex needs to reduce hospital admissions and all that that entails for the children and their families. In my neurodevelopmental role, I see children with varying levels of complex needs from 0-19 years and their families. No day is the same in my job and this is partly why I am still so passionate about it.
I am an active member of the BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnicity) Network within my Trust as I am a person of colour.
I think that it is important for me and other physiotherapists who are of colour to share our stories in order to support positive change in our profession, support physiotherapists coming behind us and to encourage young BAME to choose physiotherapy as a career choice.
I studied at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and was interested in paediatrics from my clinical years at University; this was buttressed by my tutors indicating that I had a real flair for paediatrics.
I did the usual rotations but ultimately ended up in acute paediatrics in a north London hospital. I was fortunate to have a more senior physiotherapist who had also graduated from University of Ibadan as my mentor. She was a huge support to me when I became bewildered by what I now understand to be micro-aggressions and racism by some senior staff members. This did not however discourage me from continuing to enjoy my job and improve my paediatric knowledge and skills.
It was during my days on the acute wards that I had a few babies that stayed on the wards for more than 2 weeks with neurological deficits and poor development. I began to take them down into the department to facilitate their abilities working closely with the community paediatric physiotherapists from a nearby community trust. I eventually left the hospital to work in the community with these physiotherapists.
There were several BAME physiotherapists in this service, including the service lead, as well as a paediatric speech and language therapist who was also a person of colour. In my next post, also in north London, two of the service leads were also University of Ibadan and persons of colour. learnt so much during this time.
Moving to Lincolnshire to live and work was a culture shock for me. Here I again experienced systemic racism, although I did not allow this to deter me from working to the best of my ability. It did, however, have a very negative impact on me over time.
Fast forward to the present time ... over the past 2 years the Trust has been proactive in stamping out racism of any kind and actively seeking to make itself a diverse and inclusive workplace with BAME proportionate representation on all levels.
I will continue to support this action and hope to be able to mentor new BAME staff to support them through their journeys.