To the Editor:
Re “In San Francisco, Doctors and Medical Students Feud Over War Protests” (information article, June 25):
After I see sufferers at U.C.S.F. Well being, I don’t know their political views and so they don’t know mine. I’m targeted solely on my job: utilizing my medical coaching to offer glorious, dignified care to each one that wants it.
That very same professionalism should be prolonged extra broadly throughout U.C.S.F. Medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, phlebotomists and each different clinician and employees member should go away their passions and beliefs on the hospital entrance. They’re irrelevant to affected person care.
However your article reveals that sure U.C.S.F. docs and employees imagine that expressing their anti-Israel and antisemitic views supersedes their skilled obligations on the subject of affected person care. Doing so below the guise of advocating for Palestinians not solely harms sufferers but additionally makes Jewish docs like me really feel unsafe within the office.
The hospital administration has tolerated this habits within the identify of free speech. However U.C.S.F. has a coverage to stop employees from sporting their biases on their white coats. By permitting violations of its personal coverage, U.C.S.F. harms the belief our sufferers have in all of us to put their wants first.
Tami Rowen
San Francisco
The author is an affiliate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences on the College of California San Francisco Medical Heart.
To the Editor:
If physicians at College of California, San Francisco, seem like doing one thing unprecedented, it’s as a result of the circumstances they’re protesting are unprecedented. About 500 health care workers have been reported killed in Gaza. The Israeli navy has destroyed hospitals, bombed ambulances and kidnapped clinicians on obligation.
Physicians like Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh have died inside Israeli prisons. Final month, Hani al-Jafarawi, the director of ambulance and emergency services, was killed in a strike towards a well being care facility in Gaza.
Our skilled societies have usually prevented taking a place on this disaster despite the fact that they routinely converse out on all sorts of political and social points such because the Black Lives Matter motion, L.G.B.T.Q.+ well being, reproductive justice and the struggle in Ukraine. U.S. medical journals have not often revealed articles on Gaza, in distinction to different international crises.
Identical to the scholars in encampments on campuses, the physicians protesting this struggle are multiethnic and multireligious, and embody many Jewish colleagues, reflecting the variety of our well being care employee neighborhood. Physicians throughout the nation can be taught a lot from these at U.C.S.F.
Amir Mohareb
Boston
The author is a doctor at Massachusetts Common Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical College.
To the Editor:
When physicians assume that the hospital during which they work has grow to be an area for political, social, cultural or another type of battle, they run a grave threat of violating an necessary skilled ethic.
Sufferers, particularly the sickest ones, typically fairly actually place their lives within the arms of individuals they’ve by no means met and whom they haven’t chosen as their physicians. If physicians insist on bringing their private views on overseas coverage (and what hospital must have a overseas coverage, anyway?), home politics, the tradition wars or another space of nice controversy to the bedside, sufferers shall be understandably and justifiably fearful that they won’t obtain the care and respect they deserve due to who they’re or what they assume.
We will’t and shouldn’t have separate hospitals for Democrats or Republicans; for Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus or atheists; for straight or homosexual individuals; for immigrants or native-born Individuals; or for individuals who really feel extra sympathy or affinity for Israelis or Palestinians.
Physicians can after all maintain no matter views they need on any problem of the day, however they should go away these views within the parking zone once they report for obligation. To supply the absolute best care to these in best want, physicians have to be taught to work throughout distinction, and to see the affected person within the hospital mattress as no extra, and definitely no much less, than a human being who wants their assist.
Neil W. Schluger
Valhalla, N.Y.
The author is dean of the College of Drugs, New York Medical School.
To the Editor:
I really feel past disheartened when studying time and again how people on this nation are being harassed and bullied for expressing issues and opinions. Universities and different establishments are being bullied into taking a stand concerning the Gaza disaster. Professionals inside these establishments are bullied and harassed for expressing issues and opinions. Outdated tropes concerning Jews are tolerated and billionaires are influencing decision-making concerning protesters inside these establishments.
I by no means imagined that this may happen in my nation, the supposed United States of America. Either side is stopping the opposite from exercising the precise of free speech.
I concern that we’re dropping the power to respectfully argue with out shutting one another up. It is a recipe for the demise of our democracy.
Lorri Paulucci
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
At its greatest, the setting during which we look after sufferers is a sacred house that exists for the great of these sufferers and the assist of their family members. Any practitioner or pupil who brings a specific political agenda right into a hospital or clinic betrays the sanctity of these locations. They’ve failed of their duty.
If one wears a hijab or kippah for non secular or cultural causes exterior of the hospital, they need to actually be supported in bringing these components of their non secular sense of self into the well being care setting. However political symbols (nationwide flags, watermelon buttons, Trump or Biden buttons and even pro-choice buttons) must be left at dwelling, even when one has “strongly held beliefs.”
Physicians are obligated to care for sufferers with whom they may disagree on numerous points. And they need to take pleasure in that obligation and have the identical pleasure in working alongside colleagues with whom they may have profound disagreements about politics or world occasions. Sacred areas are fragile, and so they deserve our vigilance to guard them.
Jonathan M. Rosen
Stamford, Conn.
The author is an affiliate professor of medication on the Connecticut campus of the Larner School of Drugs.