Private healthcare chiefs have banned employees from displaying pro-Palestine symbols after a complaint from a “distressed” Jewish patient.

HCA Healthcare UK, which runs some of the country’s most prestigious private hospitals, has instructed its senior executives to “ensure that our dress code policy is applied” across the company’s sites.

It came after a Jewish patient said she was left “extremely distressed” after seeing two of the three reception staff at the Devonshire Diagnostic Centre, part of HCA Healthcare’s Harley Street Clinic, wearing large badges decorated with the Palestinian flag.

It later emerged that a rucksack decorated with a visible Palestine flag badge, thought to belong to a member of the Harley Street Clinic’s pharmacy staff, had also been left in full view of patients.

The patient interpreted the badges not only as a statement of support for Palestinians during the conflict in Gaza, but as a condemnation of Israel’s actions in the region.

‘Doesn’t feel safe to be overtly Jewish’

She told The Telegraph: “It is an utterly inappropriate use of a healthcare setting to push a specific and highly divisive political agenda. It creates an environment in which it does not feel safe to be overtly Jewish, let alone associated with Israel in any way.

“It felt like a punch to the guts to be honest. They weren’t being worn in a private setting in a personal capacity, they were being worn in a work setting where people like me are already feeling vulnerable because of their condition. 

“I was very relieved I wasn’t wearing any overtly Jewish symbols, such as the Star of David, or have an obviously Jewish name because I was left feeling that anything could have happened if they had noticed that.”