North Carolina Physician: My Hospital Is Coercing Us To Say We’re Woke

We received a tip from a physician who works for Novant Health in North Carolina. The physician wanted to highlight a concerning development at their hospital and asked to remain anonymous. Here is the story.

My hospital wants patients to know how woke I am. It’s a blatant attempt to coerce me to broadcast political views. My fellow physicians and I are not only insulted but deeply worried about our careers because of this blatant coercion.

Here’s the backstory. I recently got an email from my hospital’s parent organization asking if we would like for our online profile to include a ‘LGBTQ friendly’ stamp. The stamp is rainbow colored and flashes under the doctor profiles.

In one respect, the stamp is meaningless. It was offered as a “grandfathered-in” certification, with or without any training or actual certification. Yet in a bigger sense, it’s filled with meaning. If I don’t adopt this stamp, my hospital gives patients the impression that I’m bigoted and hateful. It may even be grounds to push me and my colleagues out of the medical profession.

This move is concerning on so many levels. First of all, who in the medical practice is NOT LGBTQ friendly? Are there actually doctors who are unfriendly to their patients because of their sexual orientation? Of course not.

I’m a case in point. LGBTQ patients score me very high on patient satisfaction. Every physician and nurse I work with provides the highest level of care to these patients. This is our job and we don’t need a politicized stamp to prove anything. Yet if we don’t take it, we will somehow be ‘assumed’ to be unfriendly to LGBTQ people.

Something much more sinister could be at work. I fear an attempt to label people who will later be weeded out. Frankly, I’m terrified for my job if I don’t take the stamp. And I know dozens of my fellow physicians feel the same way. Medicine is heading in a dark direction, with physicians more worried about who they’ll offend than how to provide the best possible care.

Such are the wages of woke medicine: More posturing and politics, less professionalism and personalized care. I can’t imagine anything worse.

Is your hospital or health care provider forcing you to adopt woke views? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.