Across the country, doctors and nurses have been bullied into demonstrating their loyalty to diversity, equity, and inclusion to preserve their careers and reputations — and have been punished when they refused to do so.

Laura Morgan, a registered nurse with 40 years of experience, faced a dilemma between protecting her job and challenging the narrative that she is inherently biased against patients of other races.

In September 2021, Morgan’s employer, the Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health health care system, assigned its staff a mandatory training that included a module on "overcoming unconscious bias." After raising concerns about the training with superiors, Morgan was told there'd be no exceptions to the requirement. She received notice that failure to complete the course could result in disciplinary action including termination.

The module ended with five ideologically charged questions, which "you had to answer in an affirmative way," Morgan told National Review.

The last read: "Are you willing to challenge your biases in the moment of decision making so you don't unintentionally treat someone unfairly?"

Morgan said the training materials assumed that doctors and nurses harbored biases based on their patients’ race, gender, weight, religion, and age, citing dubious studies from left-leaning sources like the American Academy of Medical Colleges and Harvard Business Review to substantiate the charge.

"Patients don't want you to address your biases in the moment of decision making. They want you to address their medical problems," she said.

On the day of the deadline for the course, Morgan was released for the weekend and given one last chance to complete it by Monday. After she refused, she was subsequently fired by her hospital. Morgan has since joined forces with the nonprofit Do No Harm, which fights against the progressive capture of the medical field.

Reached for comment, Baylor Scott & White Health responded: "Our annual training program, which includes courses on a range of topics, is designed to reinforce skills and support professional development."

Major medical organizations have also silenced doctors who dissent from the idea that certain groups are systemically mistreated by health care providers due to their immutable characteristics.

Dr Richard Bosshardt, a Florida-based plastic surgeon, also affiliated with Do No Harm, was booted from the communication channels of the American College of Surgeons, where he had been honored as a fellow for over 30 years, because he questioned the organization's new obsession with diversity. The ACS represents the practice of surgery and its specialties.

For its clinical congress in 2018, the ACS invited pediatrician Joan Reede, then director of diversity at Harvard Medical School, to speak on "diversity, inclusion, and excellence," Bosshardt said.

"Excellence did not appear once in the entire speech. It was all about diversity and inclusion," Bosshardt said.

After sending a letter to the president of the ACS, which he said was ignored, Bosshardt started a discussion on the group's general surgery forum — the largest on the website — saying he disagreed with the decision of the college to embrace what he believed was critical race theory.

From April to August of 2021, commenters flooded the forum, with about two-thirds supporting Bosshardt's position, he said.

Reede's address was part of the organization's compensatory efforts following the murder of George Floyd, when "everybody was rushing to assure everyone including themselves that they were not racist," the doctor said.

The ACS pulled out all the stops to shield itself from criticism. It established a task force on systemic racism, published teachings on microaggressions, implicit bias, and allies vs. active bystanders, appointed a director of diversity, and adopted "anti-racism" as part of its mission, Bosshardt said.

"They were saying surgeons are racist. They were even making claims that black patients don't do as well when they have surgery by a white surgeon as they do by a black surgeon," Bosshardt claimed. "Some really toxic things. You'd expect they'd provide some evidence of that but they never did."

In June 2021, the organization hosted a DEI-themed retreat for all the leaders of the American surgical societies. The keynote speaker? Prominent critical race theory agitator and author of How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi.

Flashforward to 2022, when the general secretary of the ACS changed the rules for comments on the online forum and exiled DEI-related discussion to a new forum for "diversity," which gets minimal traffic compared to the main channel, Bosshardt said.

"It's like, you have a big auditorium with a big audience, and they don't like what you're saying so they say 'listen, we'd like you to have a voice but not in here' so they take you downstairs to the basement and put you in a broom closet," he said.

After protesting in the general forum, Bosshardt was suddenly blocked from access to all communication channels, including his private messages. The general secretary informed him he was "permanently banned for life" from the site, he said.

Bosshardt was told his account was disabled “because of repeated violations of the site Code of Conduct” including “continuous disrespectful language and placement of non-clinical posts in the General Surgery community,” according to an email from the general secretary shared with National Review.

The ACS official claimed to have warned him in the past that such behavior would warrant removal. Bosshardt said ACS never presented him with an example of a comment he posted that they deemed “disrespectful.”

“If any disrespect was thrown around it was largely at me,” he said.

The ACS did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Much of the debate surrounding DEI in the organization had been over the alleged disparities in surgery outcomes between white and minority patients, which struck Bosshardt as a conversation relevant to all surgeons.

"How can this be regarded as a non-clinical discussion?" Bosshardt said.

Marilyn Singleton, a California-based anesthesiologist who happens to be black, has warned about the damage of infusing racial considerations into continuing medical education, which doctors in the state must complete every two years to renew their licenses.

By California law, the curriculum in every course must address implicit bias, she said. One section, for instance, teaches that minorities experience disproportionately worse Covid symptoms, she said.

"You'll be reading an article about muscle relaxants and anesthesia and then somewhere in there they'll throw in a sentence about minority patients," she told National Review.

Singleton fears the trainings will foster distrust and antagonism between doctors and their patients. She said she has no choice but to take the courses to remain a doctor in the state.

"Imagine a patient walking in who's been prodded subliminally with this message that white doctor 'not good'," she said. "How are they going to trust what the doctor tells them? No one wants to look at their doctor with suspicion."