Zosia Kmietowicz, news editor, The BMJ discusses what inspired them to make an issue focused on racism and medicine, and how they did it.

“The idea of having an edition of The BMJ devoted to the issues that affect doctors and patients from ethnic minority backgrounds came to me after reading an account of one doctor’s experiences of racism during more than 40 years of working for the NHS. Rajgopalan Menon trained in southern India and arrived in the UK in the 1970s. He described the pain of being called a “Paki,” of being asked questions by patients and trainers that would not have been asked of white doctors, and of being dismissed as a potential candidate for jobs white doctors were applying for. He called for the NHS, medical royal colleges, General Medical Council, and BMA for a collective apology for their failure to act on racism, for himself and all the other ethnic minority doctors who had helped run the NHS.