I’m very glad I went to medical school when I did in 1975. I was one of a class of 106 students who only needed to worry about learning anatomy, pathology, pharmacology, biochemistry – those subjects needed to know how to treat disease. It was much easier back then – because we didn’t have to worry about gender pronouns and the color of our patient’s skin.
I first began writing about woke medical education a year ago with a post called The Woke Doctor’s Office and followed up that post with one called Woke Medical Education. Today is intended as an update for those regular readers of this blog, as well as a reference to these previous posts for those who are not.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine was the first to call attention to this situation in an Op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal in 2019 called “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns.” He wrote, “Concerns about social justice have taken over undergraduate education.” He warned about the “focus on climate change, social inequities, gun violence, bias and other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness.”
Grace-Marie Turner, writing for The Galen Institute, says many students say they are admitted to medical schools only if they give the “right” answers to a litany of woke questions. Students are being indoctrinated to see skin color as the most important thing about a patient.
Dr. Marilyn Singleton wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed that she “graduated with a medical degree in 1973, a black woman in a class of mostly white men. Since I became a physician, I have seen exactly one instance of racism in health care – and it was from a patient, not a fellow physician. As for my colleagues, I have been consistently impressed with the conscientious, individualized care they have provided to patients of every race and culture. When we all took our oath to ‘first, do no harm,’ we meant it, and we live it.”
This has been my own experience as well, but it is especially powerful to hear these words from a black woman of my peers. But Turner tells us eradicating “white racism” has become a top priority, not just in medical education but in medical practice. California is requiring all physicians who engage in direct patient care to participate in “implicit bias training” to keep their medical licenses. Just another good reason not to live in the state of California.
In a related development, many of the nation’s top medical schools and universities, starting with #1 ranked Harvard, have withdrawn from participation in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the “best medical schools.” Most said the criteria do not reflect priorities of their curricula, which includes a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They say rankings focus too much on standardized test scores, reputation and institutional wealth. I guess they don’t care much about smart students; just those who are woke enough.
Some physicians have pushed back by complaining to medical school administrators that students aren’t being properly prepared to care for actual patients. What a novel idea! One administrator’s reply was: “There is too much science in the curriculum and students can just look it up if they need answers.” I hope my doctor doesn’t need “to look it up” when my life is on the line!
Who can turn around this troubling situation for the sake of our medical future?
Turner says it starts with governors and state legislators who have jurisdiction over many state universities and medical schools and with supporting organizations working to educate policymakers and the public about these issues to find the proper balance to assure quality medical education. I hope they fix it before my doctor focuses too much on the color of my skin and not enough on the pattern of my EKG.
