Do No Harm published this op-ed from another Michigan licensee.

https://donoharmmedicine.org/in-the-news/2022/06/09/opinion-why-its-dangerous-for-michigan-to-assume-im-biased-against-my-patients/

Opinion: Why it’s dangerous for Michigan to assume I’m biased against my patients

June 8, 2022

Why is Michigan trying to destroy the doctor-patient relationship with identity politics?

That’s my question as a recently retired doctor who spent 30 years helping Michigan patients through my practice in Toledo, Ohio. I am profoundly offended by the state’s new mandate that I and every other medical professional take “implicit bias training” every year.

Not only does this baseless mandate insult doctors like me, it is also sure to ruin patients’ trust in their medical providers and lead to worse health outcomes for the very people it’s supposed to help.

I have been licensed in Michigan for years, and last month, the state’s licensing board reached out to inform me that I have to take this “implicit bias training” to maintain my ability to practice in the state. I will not be doing so since I retired in April. Yet I am still deeply disturbed at what Michigan is forcing on all my fellow medical professionals.

Michigan has all but accused us of having implicit bias, which the state defines as “an attitude or internalized stereotype that affects an individual’s perception, action or decision making in an unconscious manner and often contributes to unequal treatment.”

While I fundamentally and wholeheartedly refute that I am biased, it is impossible, by design, to convince the state, since my bias is supposedly “unconscious.”

How convenient: I am guilty by definition. And apparently I have no hope for redemption, since the training is a never-ending, annual obligation. The message is that doctor bias is a permanently unsolvable problem, even after mandatory classes year after year.

Michigan couldn’t be more wrong, for many reasons. It provides no proof or documentation that inherent bias exists. For that matter, there’s no proof that implicit bias training works, beyond insulting and punishing doctors.

More to the point, every doctor I’ve ever met treats patients as unique individuals with specific medical needs, regardless of who they are or what they look like. We work hard to relate to our patients, understand their conditions and propose tailored treatments and follow-ups. There’s no bias from them — there’s only a sworn devotion to serve our patients’ best interests.

Besides, in my case, bias is largely impossible. My primary responsibility is the interpretation of medical images, so I never meet most of my patents. I only see their images, along with some clinical information provided by the ordering doctors. I almost never know their race, sexual preference, preferred pronouns or other identities which I am now accused of being biased against.

Yet Michigan still asserts that I and every other health care provider is biased. This accusation will foster bitterness among providers who are already suffering from high levels of stress and burnout. You can bet more doctors will leave the medical profession because of this mandate.

Furthermore, implicit bias training suggests to patients that their providers are treating them less equally and providing them with worse care. This is the most dangerous consequence of all.

Think about it: If you’re told your doctor is biased against you, then why will you go see them? If your unconsciously hateful provider recommends a treatment or follow-up, why would you accept their advice? After all, they’re supposedly predisposed to treat you worse, so you have no reason to see them, listen to them or even access medical care at all.

Under this worldview, the entire medical system is permanently rigged. When something is rigged, you steer clear.

I cannot imagine anything more destructive to health care. Michigan’s mandate is an unjustified and unscientific interference in the near sacred doctor-patient relationship.

Unlike other annual medical training requirements, “implicit bias training” has nothing to do with medicine. But it has everything to do with identity politics and, as such, it will undermine medical care and outcomes for countless people.

It should not be a requirement to receive or maintain a medical license in Michigan — or any state.

Dr. Daniel A. Dessner is a retired radiologist in Toledo, Ohio. He is a member of Do No Harm.

Like COVID policy, it was never about the patients. Only ideological control. It spread like a brain virus, too.

https://thetexan.news/issues/social-issues-life-family/texas-nurse-fired-for-refusing-implicit-bias-training/article_cbd085e8-53cb-5b4e-ae4f-a0dbf0ce2627.html

Texas Nurse Fired for Refusing Implicit Bias Training

Oct 6, 2022

After spending decades in the profession caring for patients, in 2019, Laura Morgan became a nurse educator at Baylor, Scott & White (BSW) Hospital in College Station, Texas. There she helped provide continuing education and professional development courses for other nurses and health professionals until conflict over a new training module led to her termination earlier this year.

In September 2021, BSW introduced a new mandatory training session entitled “Overcoming Unconscious Bias,” which Morgan says makes assumptions about all white people.

“After 39 years of providing equal care to all patients without regard to their race, I objected to a mandatory course grounded in the idea that I’m racist because I’m white,” Morgan wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Morgan told The Texan she met several times with supervisors and communicated with BSW’s Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer to express her concerns, but the hospital refused to grant an exemption and in February 2022 she was fired.

The theory of implicit bias is grounded in the idea that regardless of a person’s stated beliefs or values, they unknowingly or “unconsciously” discriminate against members of other ethnic groups. Some social psychologists and political leaders apply the idea primarily to white Americans they say have racist associations without awareness and need to acknowledge this problem.

Founding Director of the National Training Institute on Race and Equity Professor Bryant Marks, a former advisor to President Obama, claims that regardless of what a person consciously believes, the “only two ingredients you need for having implicit bias [are] living in a society and having a brain.” Marks promotes trainings for every sector of business and public service to dismantle unconscious bias against others for race, sex, weight, and disabilities.

Skeptics, however, point out that there is no consensus on the definition of implicit bias, and that many experiments to test it have not applied scientific methods. Social psychologist Lee Jussim wrote that “the most dramatic claims about implicit bias have been debunked or, at least shown to be dubious and scientifically controversial.” Jussim added that the many implicit bias tests available only measure reaction times and do not predict behavior.

Proponents of Implicit Bias courses for healthcare settings attribute disparities in health outcomes for different racial groups to hidden racism and claim that training in which whites acknowledge unconscious bias can help alleviate the problem.

Morgan suggested that such training could inhibit proper training and, ultimately, care for patients.

“It creates barriers between doctors and nurses and their patients, and hinders the relationship,” said Morgan.

“My objection is to mandated training for implicit or unconscious bias is because the material in those courses is intended to tell health care providers what to think instead of how to think,” said Morgan. “My job as an educator was to guide people who take care of patients, especially young nurses, and to develop their critical thinking skills, not their critical race theory skills.”

Morgan notes that training at BSW and other healthcare providers in Texas is shifting towards historian and activist Ibram X. Kendi’s idea of “anti-racism,” which teaches that claiming not to be racist is the “heartbeat of racism.”

In response to a request for comment from The Texan, a spokesperson for BSW emailed to say, “Baylor Scott & White Health believes in the importance of, and is committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives; and it believes in providing its team members resources for continual development.”

Several states have implemented mandatory implicit bias training for licensure, and although Texas does not, the Texas Nurses Association advocates for such training and argues that healthcare workers should become activists against what they describe as “systemic racism” in the industry.

Harris County, Texas has also declared racism a public health crisis and instructed the county government to “dismantle the systemic racism that creates barriers to strong public health.”

Last year, Texas gubernatorial candidate and former state Senator Don Huffines published training materials from the Department of Family and Protective Services that included teaching about critical race theory and implicit bias.

After her termination from BSW, Morgan became the program manager for Do No Harm, a newly launched group drawing attention to the rise of “Critical Race Theory” in the healthcare profession.

Do No Harm board chair Dr. Stanley Goldfarb has warned that efforts to diversify the medical field by lowering standards for certain ethnic groups will have a deleterious effect on the industry.

This year, the group also filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator over race-based rulemaking and filed complaints against medical colleges allegedly discriminating against white students.

Across the country, employees in other industries have lost jobs over their refusal to comply with so-called “anti-racist” statements. In one case, attorney Nicole Levitt filed a complaint against her employer after being asked to sign a statement saying she would “own that all white people are racist and that I am not the exception.”

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies on its readers for financial support.

Holly Hansen is a Senior Reporter for The Texan where she has written extensively on criminal justice, public corruption, politics, and property rights, and is one of the state’s most recognized journalists covering Houston and Harris County. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows, discussing local, state, and federal public affairs. She graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in History, has called Texas home for three decades, and now lives in the Austin area where she enjoys the outdoors and reading historic literature.