The SJWs have made it into medicine

Good morning everyone! I hope you’re having a splendid weekend!

As I mentioned in my I’m back! post, I recently started Nursing School. Very recently, in fact. As in, the first week of January recently. And it took exactly one hour and seven minutes for me to encounter the first whiffs of SJW infiltration.

My Health Assessment class started at 7:30 A.M. sharp on Monday morning. The professor reviewed the syllabus and began explaining “The Interview”: the process by which you introduce yourself to the patient and begin gathering data about their health (or lack thereof). We talked about properly identifying the patient using name and at least one other piece of data, usually their date of birth. And then at 8:37 A.M., she said this:

“So you’ll say Hi, my name is [Lissa] and I’ll be your student nurse today. May I please have your name and date of birth? and what is your preferred pronoun?”

Wait, what?

Seeing the confused / gobsmacked / soul-crushingly disgusted looks on her students’ faces, my professor confirmed the instruction:

“Yes, they will look at you like you’re crazy. Especially in this area of Florida, where as likely as not it’s someone elderly who has never heard of being transgender. But up on the screen you’ll see a snippet from HHS-1557, which among other things says that any healthcare provider that accepts federal funds – and that’s ALL the hospitals around here – can’t discriminate on basis of gender or transgenderism. That means that we can’t assume their gender. And THAT means you’ll need to ask every patient what their preferred pronoun is, whether you – and maybe the patient – finds it ridiculous, or not.”

Here’s the relevant section of 1557:

Section 1557 builds on prior Federal civil rights laws to prohibit sex discrimination in health care. The
final rule requires that women be treated equally with men in the health care they receive and also
prohibits the denial of health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including
discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping. The final rule also requires
covered health programs and activities to treat individuals consistent with their gender identity. [emphasis mine]

Sixty-seven minutes. That’s how long I made it in Nursing School thinking that evidence-based practice was going to be the arbiter of good performance and I’d left the politically-correct BS behind.

Do you know what it’s going to do to my relationship with my patient when I ask them what their preferred pronoun is? He or she is going to think I’m a lunatic, that’s what.

Now don’t get me wrong – I will treat transgender patients to the best of my ability and with utmost respect, as I will treat any patient. If I encounter an individual whose gender identity isn’t clear, of course I would ask how he or she would like to be addressed. That’s my responsibility as a healthcare provider.

But we’re not talking about Best Practices here. We’re not talking about using my judgment to decide when I need to lead with a pronoun inquiry or if I can comfortably assume that the seventy-year-old man wearing suspenders, trousers, and a smoking jacket doesn’t need to be asked how he identifies. We ARE talking about hospitals making policies in order to follow federal guidelines and laws that result in requiring nurses to ask about gender pronouns in the first thirty seconds of encountering a patient.

This is madness.

P.S. More fun? We went over pedigree/genotype charts, in which you trace back the patient’s family and note any genetic, mental, physical etc. problems that have manifested in their relatives. I raise my hand.

“Professor? So if the patient is a biological male, but identifies as a female and wants us to use female pronouns, how do we diagram that on a genotype chart? Do we use the square for a male or the circle for a female?”

The professor looked as though she wanted to swallow cyanide.

“Um . . . well . . . I’d . . . I’d write both, with a slash between them. That’s the best way to cover your bases.”

P.P.S. Page 1297 of my Davis’s Drug Guide specifies that there are different doses of zolpidem for males and females. The recommended intermezzo (middle of the night) sublingual tablet for an adult male is 3.5 mg, while it’s only 1.75 mg for adult women. Should I dose them according to their biological sex, or their preferred gender identity? Zolpidem is Ambien, by the way. You think we should be careful to get that dosage right??