Black British and Black Caribbean Women’s Trajectories through the Wildernesses of Subordinated Spaces, (NHS workplace) and Unfamiliar Places (Higher Education): An Autoethnography

In 2014, the NHS Five Year Forward View (FYFV) set out new models of care and care strategies. Amongst them was the introduction of the role of Assistant Practitioner (AP). The AP role was positioned at Band 4 (of 9) on the NHS Careers Framework, gained through the successful completion of a foundation degree (fd). Those already in employment accessed the fd through day release to university and work-place clinical skills development. A qualified AP would work under the supervision of a registered nurse. This thesis examines and centralises the experiences of ten Black British and Black Caribbean women’s experiences of the fd programme and its impact on their personal and professional identities. It (re)tells, (re)captures and (re)presents their accounts of getting in, moving on and getting through Higher Education. This study disrupts the silence of Black women in the NHS. Black Feminist Methodological Stance is put to work to centre and privilege Black women who transitioned through the research process unearthing, examining and unapologetically speaking their ‘truths’. The analysis is intentionally theoretically provocative, it uses performative autoethnograpy to present the voices of the women through characters in fictional settings. The characters use the works of predominantly Black philosophers to critically reflect on their experiences of education. Their exposures to philosophies and their sharing of life leads them to Black feminist epistemologies. This study demands engagement, it challenges all who access it, to come and reside in our spaces… to feel the discomforts… to rethink the stereotypes… to speak of the biases… then to co-align with us… it questions… challenges… and seeks honest approaches to fairness in nursing education and professions; two areas, where for seven decades Black women have been professionally subordinated and exploited. This thesis demonstrates the courage of the author to engage in research which breaks the silence of Black women in NHS and makes the theorised assertion of our ‘right to write’ as Black women about Black women. The presentation of the data as performance autoethnography, renders this work accessible to the contributors, as well as significant and important for academic scholarship. This study strives for engagement, it resists recommendations which, historically are ineffective liberatory tools of the master’s house, in that they fail to make a difference to the Black women’s assigned subordinated space. Finally, this work challenges Black women in the NHS to become active agents of their professional emancipation. New Knowledge Contribution: This thesis contributes the following new knowledge: The production of a literature review which resists the normative approach to the production of a thesis, it utilises oral accounts which work to both contradict as well as illuminate accounts presented in written text. It retells the stories of ten Black female Health Care Assistants (HCAs). Because of their low professional status, HCAs are generally invisible and voiceless in research studies. This study centralises their experiences, making them visible, therefore providing a partial illumination of their educational experiences. The literature provides Black nurses of the 21st Century with an example of how Black nurses in the past coalesced to redress the inequitable nursing education provision they experienced during colonial times. Black nurses of the Caribbean broke the nursing profession’s class ceiling securing positions previously solely reserved for Caucasians. The unearthing and presentation of Black Caribbean women’s nursing education history provides Black nurses with a positive self-liberatory learning example from Caribbean nurses of the past. This study demonstrates the courage of the author to present the data analysis as performance autoethnography, in so doing, it renders this work accessible to the contributors, the academic as well as ordinary members of the Black community. This thesis strives for engagement and discussion asking questions of institutions rather than being prescriptive and autocratic (making recommendations). It also challenges Black women in the NHS to become active conduits of their own professional emancipation rather than awaiting ‘redemption from those using the tick box tools of the ‘master’s house’.