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Monday, May 23, 2022

My Humble Take On Bias Training

There was a day when we were in the heart of a covid surge. And my coworker and I happened to both be sitting in the department. And we so happened to have the TV on watching the Price Is Right. And our broadcast was interrupted by a news bulletin. Governor Whitmer was having a press conference about the pandemic. 

She gave statistics and informed us she was expanding the mask mandate. And she talked about statistics about how the black population was being hit the hardest. So, her solution was to mandate bias training for all healthcare people.

My coworker and I were like, "What the F#$#!" And we usually don't swear. We are both Catholics. We were irate about this. We had to shut the TV off.  And we were busy, so moments later I was back on the floor taking care of COVID patients. And my coworkers who also watched the Whitmer press conference were also ticked off by this news. 

Here we are law obeying citizens. We treat every person who enters this hospital with respect and dignity. We don't even think, nor care, what color or sex a person is. We treat them all very well. And here our governor is telling us it's our fault that black people have a higher incidence of COVID than the non-black population. 

Do black people in some locations get treated poorly. I know for a fact that some of them do. I have had black patients tell me that they were treated unfairly at other hospitals (no ours of course). So, if this is the case, then punish the people who treat black people poorly. Do not punish the nice people like me and my coworkers. Do not punish the law obeying citizens. 

So now all my healthcare coworkers and I have to sit through five hours of bias training. You want to talk about boring. We already have to sit through hours and hours of annual compliance training where we just repeat the same boring stuff year after year. And now they tack this on. 

So, it's understandable the frustration about this bias training. And, for the record, this has nothing to do with my place of employment. They do have to enforce this upon us. But, it's not their fault. It's the fault of politicians who are using this as an excuse to push their political agenda on the innocent. 

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