“Woke” can’t learn, won’t cure
Those cute little med students, they grow up so darn fast. Why it seems like only yesterday…
Actually, it seems like 30 long years ago. It was 1992, Day # 2 of medical school at the University of Florida (Go Gators!), the Big Deal, we had finally made it! After the first day of introductory speechmaking and form-filling, we packed into the auditorium that would be our home and chamber of tensions for the next two long years to hear… what?
We were treated to an entire, painful, absurd morning of being preemptively scolded about sexism, homophobia, and racism, during which we heard – and I’m not making this up – that being required to show proof of income for a home mortgage loan was racist. By an esteemed faculty pulmonologist. Who happened to be black.
I hope I was done with this insulting, absurd bullshit, but there I was in 2012, sitting at my kitchen table doing my first and last ABFM MOC module on “cultural competency.” It was anti-American, anti-western, and just short of being overtly racist. My only solace was the large dent I put in a bottle of Bombay Gin, complete with Queen Victoria’s face on the label, toasting the dying days of Western Imperialism which, among other things, produced modern medicine, as I completed that extortion.
But now two stories highlight the actual state of medical training, now decidedly “woke,” proving that things have accelerated into much, much worse.
The first concerns a group of idiots at the University of Michigan Medical School who got up and stomped out of their own White Coat Ceremony because they didn’t like the speaker. Why? Because Kristin Collier, MD, “an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, had previously called abortion ‘violence’ and vowed to fight for her “prenatal sisters.’”
“Holding on to a view of feminism where one fights for the rights of all women and girls, especially those who are most vulnerable,” she tweeted in May. “I can’t not lament the violence directed at my prenatal sisters in the act of abortion, done in the name of autonomy.”
Okay, that’s a point of view which, while certainly not unanimous in medicine, was received as justification for these toddlers masquerading as graduate students to petition the university to remove her as the speaker from the ceremony. So noble, so brave. Except Collier had no plans to talk about the abortion issue, didn’t even bring it up, and “simply encouraged students and parents and offered them advice on what to expect as they begin their careers in the healthcare field.” She responded to these babies thusly:
“We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur,” she continued, the National Review reported. “And I hope that for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters most: coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families with the goal of welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exist on this earth.” It’s going to be tough on these little twerps when they find out that in the actual world, you often disagree with colleagues and you have to handle those disagreements with courtesy and respect, or you won’t learn anything, the consultant won’t see your referrals, and the patient’s care will suffer.
Never an organization to be left out of genuinely stupid fashions, the Association of American Medical Colleges jumped in with both virtual, non-gendered appendages. These demented ignorami released a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Competencies Across the Learning Continuum.”
Did you know that “Since the founding of the United States, there have been systemic health and health care inequities grounded in racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of discrimination that still permeate our current health system…”? How can YOU, sorry reader, consider yourself a competent physician or citizen of a compassionate global community if you don’t agree with “the need for improved integration of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in medical education and training,” huh, you bigoted scum?!
These young pioneer indoctrinates are expected to demonstrate “evidence of self-reflection and how one’s personal identities, biases, and lived experiences may influence one’s perspectives, clinical decision-making, and practice.”
But wait, there’s more. Would-be providers (not sure they’ll deserve being called anything better after this) must show the “value of diversity by incorporating dimensions of diversity into the patient’s health assessment and treatment plan” as well as “knowledge of the intersectionality of a patient’s multiple identities and how each identity may result in varied and multiple forms of oppression or privilege related to clinical decisions and practice.” A purportedly scientific pursuit is being shackled into pretending and promulgating the value of goals with no objective value, and no defined success points.
The AAMC even whines about “’colonization, White supremacy, acculturation, [and] assimilation’ as ‘systems of oppression on health and healthcare.’” Assimilation?? So now the western medical tradition was the freakin’ Borg?!
Last weekend I sat up gloriously late, watching for the thousandth time that most impolitic of all comedies without message or seriousness, “Animal House.” My favorite moment is when Otter delivers his brilliant soliloquy:
“But you can’t hold a whole fraternity (medical school) responsible for the behavior of a few, sick perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity (medical school) system? And if the whole fraternity (medical school) system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg: isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!” And the frat members walk out, not on a different point of view or a chance to learn, but on those trying to condemn them and twist them into self-perpetuating automatons of self-harm.
None of this moral self-flagellation will be worth one damn when it’s time to treat a broken leg, or the next pandemic.
Your words are right on, but your actions are showing that you’re supporting the system. You’re feeding the ABIM MOC monster even as you’re swilling booze to becalm yourself. Time to vote with your feet instead of your blog. Two words: NBPAS (National Board of Physicians and Surgeons). Okay, maybe that’s more than two words, I never said I was a math major. The NBPAS will re-certify you without the tyranny of the ABIM, and NBPAS recertification is rapidly gaining widespread acceptance. Check them out!
Good advice, totally agree, and already did! (The CC story was from 10 years ago.)
I was lucky I matriculated in 1978 and escaped all this bullcrap. Yeah there was some discussion about the disparities in healthcare but no editorial comments. Oh, I bailed out and retired at age 63.5 years as I was tired of call and hospital work. Escaped a lot of this garbage that new docs have to face and I truly feel sorry for them. I went from being a satisfied practitioner in the beginning and totally dissatisfied with all the useless busy work piled on docs at the end. Kurt
Butkitt was a missionary surgeon in Africa. He noticed that diverticular disease was vitually unknown among Africans. He then noticed that Africans living in Great Britain, did develop diverticular disease.
The woke curriculum would lead a Burkitt to conclude that the African was subjected to the racism of the British colonial power, and this caused his diverticular disease.
The racist curriculum would lead a Burkitt to investigate differences between traditional African diet and British diet.
Great example!
Agree it’s gone too far, but it has always been important to know what your patients’ struggles are. Assuming their life experiences are the same as yours, that they have all the advantages you have cannot serve them. Often they don’t, and we should know that and previous generations often didn’t. Assuming the same of all your colleagues is also detrimental to the profession. Not accepting or promoting based on subconscious or even conscious bias is worth discouraging.
As usual Pat, writing and thinking excellence. Thanks.
The new generation have discovered predestinarianism and invoked John Calvin as their guidestar. You see, people are said now to be infused with an essence of sinfulness (white males) or else the Chosen Ones, who bear any admirable characteristic special to the Chosen. There is no existence, but rather several existences, among the Elect or among the Sinners, as was ordained before you were born by the color of your skin in utero, or the fate map of one’s Müllerian duct.
One cannot rise by struggle and effort into human righteousness; sinners do not know the language and rituals of the Chosen, and are condemned to merit calumny. There is nothing salvific for being of the wrong caste. Virtue is no longer a goal to attain, but a hereditary badge to wear by virtue of one’s ancestry. Years after the Empire of the Righteous fell by the wayside, now comes a new Empire.
This policy of considering requiring proof of income verification as racist resulted in the Great recession of 2008 which almost became a great depression and worldwide financial collapse. The Clinton administration mandated loose interpretations of the fair housing act which resulted in no verifications of income. Once the fraudsters realized no one was watching and these homes could be repackaged and sold they went into overdrive with fraud. People buying homes bought so irregardless of price of the home or their own income to be able to pay back the mortgage. That resulted in the housing bubble which ultimately blew up. Woke policies destroyed 10 trillion dollars of us funds from this crisis which could have been put to far greater use.