Commentary

What Counts for “Education” At Stanford’s Medical School

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • June 3, 2022
  • Stanford University

Another day, another medical school pushing woke ideas on physicians. This time it’s Stanford University School of Medicine, which has a course focused on “unconscious bias in medicine.” As with similar efforts nationwide, this course is consciously steeped in ideological bias.

The course, which is specifically designed for current physicians looking to fulfill “Continuing Medical Education” requirements, immediately admits that it’s a “seemingly non-science topic.” Sure enough, it lays out goals that have nothing to do with science or medicine. The list includes getting physicians to acknowledge “the effects of unconscious bias in everyday interactions” and “identify where personal unconscious biases may reside across gender, race/ethnicity, and/or cultural attributes.”

Once they sign up for the course, physicians take a test that shows their “baseline” bias. They are then bombarded with ideology to convince them of their bias and help them overcome it. Far from helping physicians view people equally, the course pushes physicians to focus primarily on their patients’ racial, cultural, or gender identity, which is itself discrimination. The course also involves Harvard University’s discredited Implicit Association Test, which falsely claims to show someone’s bias.

At the end of the course, physicians must take another test and get at least 75% of questions right in order to pass. One question focuses on using something called the “camera technique” to overcome bias toward a transgender patient. Overall, the questions reinforce the perception that physicians are biased – a dangerous assertion that insults physicians and injures patient trust in healthcare.

Such courses are rapidly becoming mandatory. States like Michigan and Massachusetts have already implemented a requirement that physicians take regular courses on unconscious bias, and to fulfill it, they’ll turn to courses like Stanford’s. The deeper this so-called “education” seeps into healthcare, the more damage it will do.