It is vital health boards crack down on racist attitudes expressed by patients against medical staff, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres says.
His comments follow reports some patients unwilling to have foreign doctors operate on them have cancelled their surgery at Wanganui Hospital.
The patients' actions followed
revelations that Czech-born gynaecologist Roman Hasil botched a series of sterilisations on women at the hospital.
He fled New Zealand in March and Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson is investigating.
Since then, some staff have been racially abused and three patients have cancelled operations.
Mr de Bres said it was the duty of the health boards to deal with that type of behaviour. "It is absolutely incumbent on the district health boards to ensure their staff are not subject to any sort of racial discrimination."
He said that if staff felt that was not happening, they could complain to the commission and they would take the issue up with the board.
"The principle issue for us is to ensure that the board is taking the appropriate action to ensure that it's clients are not discriminating or showing prejudice towards their staff - it's simply about a safe workplace."
Mr de Bres said if patients continued to discriminate against staff because of their race then normal practice was to not offer the service to that person.
However, he said in the health situation that would be "difficult".
"Nevertheless I think the board has to seek assurances from its patients that they will treat their staff with respect - unless their staff do something wrong.
"And ... being foreign is not a crime or professional malpractice."
- NZPA
