In a recent column for the National Review, Dr. Richard Bosshardt, a renowned surgeon, criticized the American College of Surgeons (ACS) for intensifying its commitment to antiracist initiatives.
This move comes at a time when numerous organizations and corporations are distancing themselves from such contentious principles.
Dr. Bosshardt wrote, "Americas surgeons are not woke enough, according to the American College of Surgeons (ACS)." The ACS, the largest surgical organization in the country, recently introduced a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) toolkit for providers. Earlier this month, the ACS announced that the toolkit would "provide a blueprint for implementing equitable practices" in the medical field.
Dr. Bosshardt detailed how the ACS has swiftly adopted DEI and antiracist teachings since 2020. He contended that the organization is compromising the quality of medical training and patient care by focusing on concepts such as "microaggressions," "implicit bias," and "White privilege," which he believes "have no place in medicine."
"The toolkit is an exhaustive, some might say exhausting, compilation of everything related to pushing the narrative of systemic and structural racism as the source of disparities including minority representation within the ACS and clinical outcomes in minority surgical patients," he elucidated.
Dr. Bosshardt criticized the toolkit for using flawed studies to propagate the "unbelievably toxic" notion that racism permeates surgery and results in inferior outcomes for Black patients. He also pointed out that the toolkit advocates for implicit racial bias training to combat racism, despite research debunking its effectiveness.
The surgeon expressed that the most concerning aspect of the toolkit is its requirement for surgeons to categorize patients into racial identity groups. He argued that this approach threatens the principles upon which modern medicine is founded.
"The traditional tenets of Hippocratic medicine, which focus on the individual in front of the physician, have been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. Any disparity in outcomes of care of minorities is proof of racial discrimination," he wrote.
Dr. Bosshardt warned that the emphasis on antiracism and DEI could have a detrimental impact on medicine by consuming valuable training time for surgeons, thereby putting patients at risk.
"There is a finite amount of time in residency training to mold a competent surgeon from a fumble-fingered intern. To assume that we can continue to turn out excellent surgeons and simultaneously burden surgical education with the degree of time-consuming indoctrination in anti-racism and DEI demanded by the ACS toolkit is, at best, foolish and futile, and, at worst, dangerous to our patients," he wrote.
Dr. Bosshardt revealed that he has already observed a decline in the quality of medical care due to these policies. He shared, "I have spoken to many of my surgical peers, and we agree that we are already seeing an erosion of quality in surgery, with many programs turning out surgeons who are not ready to practice independently. I have spoken to surgical residents who report a sense that they are not getting the necessary hands-on clinical and surgical experience to feel confident, while being simultaneously tasked with assimilating and regurgitating anti-racist and DEI ideology."
In 2023, numerous corporations revised their DEI policies under pressure from conservative legal groups, as reported by FOX Business. Top DEI executives from entertainment powerhouses such as Disney and Netflix also resigned from their positions in 2023. In June, the University of North Carolina's medical school disbanded its DEI task force, preceding the Supreme Court's ruling that rejected affirmative action policies in college admissions.
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