DEI Got Me Sacked From My Nursing Job

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.

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.

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.”

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…  Les mer signs you up for an ‘Unconscious Bias’ aka ‘Implicit Bias’ training, then they are doing exactly that.”