Medical School Says Student ‘Didn’t Intend to Harm’ Patient Who Mocked Her Pronoun Badge

Wake Forest University School of Medicine in a file image. Google Maps

A North Carolina medical school claimed that a student didn’t deliberately mistreat a patient who mocked her “pronoun pin,” despite her social media post apparently implying otherwise.

Kychelle Del Rosario, a fourth-year student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, wrote in a since-deleted Twitter post that she hurt a man in her own care, apparently a punishment for making fun of a pin that listed her preferred “she/her” pronouns.

“I had a patient I was doing a blood draw on see my pronoun pin and loudly laugh to the staff ‘She/Her? Well of course it is! What other pronouns even are there? It?’” Del Rosario wrote. “I missed his vein so he had to get stuck twice.”

screenshot/Twitter

In the wake of social media outrage over the alleged patient abuse, the Wake Forest University said the trainee doctor is on leave, but not because of her post.

“Wake Forest School of Medicine has completed a thorough review of the patient encounter with our medical student who recently made an inaccurate statement on social media,” the school wrote in a statement to ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ producer Gregg Re.

“The review determined that the student had no intention to harm the patient and followed Medical Center protocols The School and the student have agreed upon her taking an extended leave. During this time the student will not participate in any patient care activities,” the school said.

Re said the university refused to tell him whether they had contacted the man involved in the incident.

Wake Forest didn’t specify how long the extended leave will be, nor did they explain how they determined it was just an accident and not driven by the student’s ideology.

In a 2021 essay for health charity group Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, Del Rosario wrote she was a leader of Safe Zone in Medicine, a Wake Forest student organization “run by health care trainees whose goal is to educate health professionals about the needs and disparities in LGBTQ+ healthcare.”

“This role prepares me to become a trustworthy doctor and advocate for the transgender community—a population which the medical field has harmed greatly in the past,” the essay read. “It also allows me to train other healthcare professionals who aim to improve their practice to be more welcoming and gender-affirming.”

The controversy comes as medical schools across the United States endorse social justice activism and push for institutional change. In October 2021, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), of which Wake Forest is a member, released a 54-page language guide (pdf) suggesting aspiring doctors to not only replace certain words with “equity-focused alternatives,” but also take up particular ideological perspectives on certain health issues.

A language guide by Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association promotes "health equity-based public narratives" in medicine. screenshot/Association of American Medical Colleges

The AAMC is also planning to release “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) competencies,” which could establish social justice activism as de facto professional requirements for medical students and professors, according to National Association of Scholars (NAS), which has obtained and reviewed the draft.

Under the proposed DEI curriculum standards, medical professors need to teach “how systems of power, privilege, and oppression inform policies and practices and how to engage with systems to disrupt oppressive practices,” while students are expected to be “an active bystander” when they witness “injustices” such as “microaggression.”

“These competencies will deal a blow to medical education,” the NAS warned, noting that they are based on a controversial ideological world view that looks at things through the lens of oppression. “They will force students and physicians to embrace social justice activism, prompt schools to evaluate students and faculty based on their adherence to a controversial set of beliefs, and ensure the violation of academic freedom.”