LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – In the world of healthcare, there’s a lot of talk about something called “implicit bias training.” It’s supposed to help doctors, nurses, and other medical pros understand and address any hidden biases they might have.

But here’s the thing: not everyone thinks it’s helpful. Some say it’s more about pushing certain ideas than actually helping patients. And some also say it’s actually racist not antiracist, because it assumes that everyone is thinking or acting a certain way because of their race.

Michigan mandates implicit bias training for medical professionals.

MORE NEWS: A Hidden Gem: Tawas Bay

In Michigan, they’ve made this training mandatory for medical professionals – over 400,000 of them. This includes social workers, massage therapists, marriage therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers, optometrists and more – basically everyone except those who are in veterinary medicine.

The requirement for Implicit Bias Training was added to the Public Health Code – General Rules in 2021 per Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Executive Directive 2020-07 and was subsequently updated in March 2023.

What does Michigan define as “implicit bias”?

The rule defines implicit bias as “an attitude or internalized stereotype that affects an individual’s perception, action, or decision making in an unconscious manner and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, age, disability, or other characteristic.”

Training on Implicit Bias is required as a condition for initial licensure or registration as well as license or registration renewal. The mandate is monitored and enforced by Michigan’s Licensing and Regulatory Affairs department (LARA) who promulgated the standards for the program.

Ongoing training is required.

This is not a one-time training. Implicit Bias training is required every time a medical professional renews their license. Initially, a medical professional must take two hours of implicit bias training within the five years immediately preceding issuance of their license or registration. After that, they are required to complete one hour of implicit bias training for each year of their license or registration cycle.

Governor Whitmer imposed the implicit bias training through executive order.

The initiation of the rule, as stated by Whitmer in her executive order, is something done to improve equity in the delivery of health care. The governor points out that the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated, with “brutal proof,” the persistence of racial disparities in our society. She continues to say that in addition to COVID-19, the disparity includes the issues of morbidity, mortality and health status for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous Americans.

Although she calls the front-line health-care workers “heroes” in their work during the pandemic, the governor also says they need to do better and training them to “recognize and mitigate implicit bias will only help these workers carry out their mission of providing the best heath care to all they serve.”

Medical advocacy group is offering a different approach to mandated DEI training.

MORE NEWS: Whitmer’s Tweet on Education Contradicted by Recent Data

But a group called “Do No Harm” disagrees – and they are doing something different. Instead of just going along with the usual training which is provided by others in the state, they are offering a new course that looks at things in a more “practical” way.

The organization “Do No Harm” which represents physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers, is focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice. Their website says they strive to make healthcare better for all and highlight and counteract “divisive trends in medicine” such as “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) and youth-focused gender ideology.

According to a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a physician and Chairman of Do No Harm, says that he has a new option for Michigan physicians.

Course starts May 1st.

In his writing, he says, “On May 1, my organization will launch a continuing medical education course that fulfills Michigan’s implicit-bias-training mandate. Created by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2021 and updated last year, the mandate requires regular indoctrination for the members of 26 medical fields – not only doctors and nurses, but athletic trainers, acupuncturists, massage therapists, midwives and many others.”

He explains that a staggering 400,000 medical pros are now forced to swallow the pill of implicit bias training with every license application or renewal, saying, “Michigan’s mandate is one of the most expansive in the nation.”

Goldfarb continues, “The authors of this policy no doubt want every medical professional in the state to accept the woke party line on race. But our course goes in a more ethical – and less political – direction. Instead of teaching implicit bias as fact, we’re telling medical professionals the truth – that this training is grounded in falsehood and is a direct threat to the health and well-being of patients.”

How the course fits into required mandate.

Goldfarb explains how his organization is able to offer the course by saying, “The rule requires providers to be ‘a nationally-recognized or state-recognized health-related organization,’ which we are. We also provide ‘information on implicit bias,’ another requirement. And our course includes ‘strategies to reduce disparities in access to and delivery of health care services.’”

Michigan News Source reached out to Goldfarb about the Michigan course and he said, “We met the criteria in the sense that it’s an approved CME (Continuing Medical Education) course.” Whether the

course is going to be offered in other states depends on the other criteria they might have and if they are depending on certain “suppliers” who they want to give those courses.

Why offer the course?

When asked what led his organization to offer the class, Goldfarb said, “We became aware of the fact that we could fulfill the requirements. This has been an issue that has concerned us greatly since our organization started two years ago. It was this focus on implicit bias and unwillingness to look at the real basis for healthcare disparities which we would like to see eliminated. And we’d like to see them eliminated by attacking the real problem. So once we became aware that Michigan had rules that would allow us to provide a course if we developed a good enough course that met all the requirements, that we should proceed down that path.”

When he was asked how he thinks the state will respond to his course offering, he said, “Who knows? All this has become so politicized and we’re trying to really de-politicize it. We’re not doing politics here, we’re just trying to talk about what the data really shows in the medical literature and the psychology literature about implicit bias and what it means and how it influences behavior.”

Goldfarb delves into the organization’s approach, giving key facts about implicit bias and explaining how it’s generally filled with “insulting accusations against medical professionals” including overtly racist statements and assumptions. Goldfarb says, “Medical professionals have been told in training that they contribute to ‘modern-day lynchings in the workplace’ and that their ‘implicit bias kills.’ This isn’t medical education. It’s ideological claptrap.”

He told Michigan News Source, “The typical implicit bias training courses say ‘well, everybody’s biased and we have to remove bias because if we remove bias, we’re going to change health outcomes.’ That’s kind of the mentality and the logic that has been applied and we’re trying to show ‘no, implicit bias is not the problem for disparate health outcomes.’”

There’s no way to measure implicit bias says physician.

Goldfarb added, “There’s no way to measure implicit bias that’s in anyway reproducible and accurate… health care disparities are very complicated issues and have very much to do with patient behaviors, access and accessibly of the health care system, health literacy, some genetic aspects to it…So to sort of decide that it’s all due to bias and then say that well this is the cure for health care disparities, the literature just says that’s just wrong, it’s not true but that’s what most of the courses suppose.”

Group says that white doctors are NOT hurting and killing black patients because of bias.

Goldfarb says his organization is illuminating the disturbing premise of wokeness in medicine – that white doctors are hurting or even killing black patients, an argument based on the existence of real yet complicated health disparity data.

Goldfarb says, “This argument is predicated on the belief – explicitly stated at medical schools and by major medical associations – that health outcomes improve when patients and physicians are matched by race. That’s false, as our course shows with a thorough review of the scholarly evidence.

More to the point, ‘racial concordance,’ as activists call it, is a thinly veiled argument for the resegregation of medicine.”

Goldfarb explains about his new educational offering, “Our course is available to every medical professional in Michigan. We hope it will become the default choice for new-license and renewal applicants alike. It may also meet continuing medical education requirements for medical professionals in other states, and it could be relevant for workers in other industries who have been told to get training about implicit bias.”

He concludes, “Medical professionals deserve to know they’re being primed to accept abominable ideas. They should be freed from woke brainwashing so they can focus their energy on the hard work of improving lives.”