From my  America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Diana Blum, MD – https://www.americaoutloud.com/brain-heart-and-medical-school-wokeism/
When I applied to medical school, the criteria were the ability to handle the academics and compassion for patients. Yes, medicine was a white male dominated field. My class had 13 women out of 132 students. Most schools were aware of the lack of women in medicine and as of 2019 the majority of medical students are women.
At a time when women in medical schools were rare, Johns Hopkins Hospital is an example of how admitting women to a major medical school in the 1890s did not mean lowering standards. It meant giving women an equal opportunity. This welcome change came about because Hopkins needed money to build the medical school. Four daughters of the original university trustees promised to raise the needed half a million dollars on the condition that the medical school accept women. The benefactors were clear: the entrance requirements were strict and had to be met by both male and female applicants.
In the late 1960s, many schools addressed attracting students from various ethnic groups hoping to better serve all demographics. But when it came to race, equal opportunity became affirmative action. The 1978 U.S. Supreme Court Bakke decision held that creating a diverse classroom environment is a compelling state interest under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, it is permissible for affirmative action programs to take race into account in the admissions process.
Unfortunately, politics commandeered diversity. It has morphed from students from different backgrounds socializing and learning together with the common goal of becoming stellar physicians who deliver compassionate, quality medical care. Now diversity means condemning different kinds of people to a life in their own racial or gender silo. People are no longer seen as individual human beings. Worse yet for the future of medical care, achieving diversity in school or the workplace is taking precedence over excellence.
Competence and compassion can be found in white, black, gay, straight, male, and female physicians. We all were meant to work together to deliver great medical care to each and every one of our patients.
My guest and I will talk a little medicine and a lot of the politics of medicine with the new emphasis on wokeness possibly at the expense of excellence.
