Obese Black Women Diversity Training

Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, MD fires nurse for opposing DEI

Most people in the traditional, pro-marriage camp have noticed that the marriage rate is in a freefall. I’m talking about people like the Daily Wire hosts, Brad Wilcox, etc. They ignore the disincentives facing men, and just slam their fists on the table and cry “Get Married!” to men. But they have no interest in fixing the root cause. They think that shaming men will make them marry.

Here’s a story from the Wall Street Journal (archived) about a male nurse – a good man – who lost his job:

It’s fine to oppose diversity, equity and inclusion as long as you keep it to yourself. The moment you speak out, you have a target on your back. That’s the lesson I learned in February. I made the mistake of questioning DEI on my personal social-media account. The hospital where I worked fired me within days.

I’ve been a registered nurse for 16 years. In 2021 I began working in the emergency department at Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, Md., rising to assistant clinical manager in February 2023. Since I oversaw nurses, my highest priority after providing the best care to patients was protecting my team. That’s what got me into trouble.

I do think it’s important to note that this man made a terrible mistake by thinking that it was safe to work in a blue city in a blue state. He does bear some responsibility for that choice, as well as the choice to speak out from a social media account with his real name. That’s why I use an alias. Sure, he gets into the Wall Street Journal, but at what cost?

Like many states, Maryland has been foisting DEI courses on medical professionals for several years. Since 2022 the state has required that all healthcare professionals take “implicit bias” training, largely in response to worries about black maternal mortality. The state has also committed to reducing disparities in severe maternal morbidity between black and white women over the next three years. My hospital began using a course called “B.I.R.T.H Equity Maryland,” which stands for Breaking Inequality Reimagining Transformative Healthcare.

I took the first session of the course in July 2023. I was bombarded with evidence-free claims that implicit bias has caused a crisis of maternal mortality in black women. The course ignored the complex factors that contribute to higher black maternal mortality, including comorbidities, while defining any death from any cause after a year of giving birth as maternal mortality—a logical stretch.

Overall, the course implied that white nurses like me are killing black mothers. I was supposed to internalize this message and somehow apply it to the management of my team.

It’s funny because you think that when you are going to a health care provider, that they are going to improve your health. But, because they have subscribed to a fact-free mythology, they lie to you to you, which can actually hurt you in the long run.

In January, Meritus sent me materials for another DEI course for hospital leaders. The materials asserted, among other things, that the U.S. is built on “an ideology of White supremacy that justifies policies, practices and structures which result in social arrangements of subordination for groups of color through power and White privilege.”

I quickly decided I wouldn’t spread these hateful messages to the nurses under my supervision. I didn’t attend the course and wasn’t punished for it. A few weeks later, I received an email instructing me to register for an in-person implicit-bias seminar in March. I declined to do so, again with no punishment. The advocacy group Do No Harm has shown how medical professionals are often penalized for not taking such training, so I was grateful I got off easy.

The mounting politicization of the workplace frustrated me, so on Feb. 7 I posted what I thought was an innocuous message to my Facebook page: “No employer has the right to invade the unconscious spaces of it’s [sic] employees minds in an attempt to reprogram them into thinking certain ways. If your employer signs you up for an ‘Unconscious Bias’ aka ‘Implicit Bias’ training, then they are doing exactly that.”

My Facebook page doesn’t link me to Meritus, nor did I mention the hospital by name. I didn’t mention the courses, either. All I did was criticize the idea that people should be forced to accept a hateful worldview.

I would imagine that his reason for speaking out was to provide superior medical care to his patients – to all of his patients. Sadly, his employer had a different goal in mind. Their goal was to virtue signal. And that’s more important to them than serving customers.

That was my mistake—speaking out publicly. The next day I received a call from my manager, who informed me that Meritus had placed me on administrative leave. She said she believed human resources intended to fire me and told me to attend a meeting on Feb. 12. At that meeting, Scott Salzetti, Meritus vice president of team member services, handed down my sentence. He provided me with a document that cited my post and referred to several other posts that “could be reasonably viewed as offensive” or “were misleading, or false.”

I wasn’t told what those posts were, though after reviewing my Facebook account, I suspect it was a January post in which I stated that “corporate healthcare has shifted its focus from patient centered care directives to diversity of the workforce and inclusive excellence training (aka thought reform) for its leaders.” Nothing in that sentence is false or misleading, and again I didn’t mention my employer or a training course. No matter: For openly questioning DEI, instead of keeping my concerns to myself, I was fired. (In response to an inquiry from a Journal editor, a Meritus Medical Center spokeswoman confirmed the termination of my employment but otherwise declined to comment.)

[…]In the meeting where I was fired, a Meritus representative repeatedly said I had waded into “a touchy subject.” That’s exactly my point. DEI is inherently divisive and discriminatory to boot. No hospital or medical provider should touch something so touchy, much less fire someone for daring to question it.

I hope this will help young Christians and conservatives to think carefully about what field they choose to go into, and maybe even where they live. You can’t be guided by your feelings. You have to have a plan to reduce your vulnerability to the secular left fascists.

3 thoughts on “Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, MD fires nurse for opposing DEI”

  1. I had a DEI issue at a job a couple of years ago. After blogging on it, I wondered if somebody I worked with my stumble across it and it end up getting me fired. I would’ve been okay with that, though. I almost raised a ruckus about it at work. It wasn’t so much my place of employment as it was the clients we were serving. They used to just ask us to submit voluntary information about our staff’s race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. But one of our clients decided to make it a requirement. That meant we were being required to divulge whether we were all gay, straight, or whatever.

    To me, the whole thing seemed backward. If the goal was to make sure certain kinds of people aren’t discriminated against, then they were asking us to do the opposite of what we usually do in other cases to prevent discrimination. For example, you’re not allowed to ask people about their religion in a job interview. But to comply with our clients requirements, we had to ask employees whether they preferred to sleep with men or women.

    I refused to do it. It never caused a problem, but I was prepared to defend my position and get fired if need be. It really made me angry.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I have medical health options. I will no longer use Meritus, as corporate submission to DEI is affirmative action 3.0, the dumbing down of organizational performance.

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