To the Editor:
Re “In San Francisco, Doctors and Medical Students Feud Over War Protests” (news article, June 25):
When I see patients at U.C.S.F. Health, I don’t know their political beliefs and they don’t know mine. I am focused only on my job: using my medical training to provide excellent, dignified care to every person who needs it.
That same professionalism must be extended more broadly across U.C.S.F. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, phlebotomists and every other clinician and staff member must leave their passions and beliefs at the hospital entrance. They are irrelevant to patient care.
But your article shows that certain U.C.S.F. doctors and staff believe that expressing their anti-Israel and antisemitic views supersedes their professional obligations when it comes to patient care. Doing so under the guise of advocating for Palestinians not only harms patients but also makes Jewish doctors like me feel unsafe in the workplace.
The hospital administration has tolerated this behavior in the name of free speech. But U.C.S.F. has a policy to prevent staff from wearing their biases on their white coats. By allowing violations of its own policy, U.C.S.F. harms the trust our patients have in all of us to place their needs first.
Tami Rowen
San Francisco
The writer is an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
To the Editor:
If physicians at University of California, San Francisco, appear to be doing something unprecedented, it is because the circumstances they are protesting are unprecedented. About 500 health care workers have been reported killed in Gaza. The Israeli military has destroyed hospitals, bombed ambulances and abducted clinicians on duty.
Physicians like Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh have died inside Israeli prisons. Last month, Hani al-Jafarawi, the director of ambulance and emergency services, was killed in a strike against a health care facility in Gaza.
Our professional societies have generally avoided taking a position on this crisis even though they routinely speak out on all types of political and social issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement, L.G.B.T.Q.+ health, reproductive justice and the war in Ukraine. U.S. medical journals have rarely published articles on Gaza, in contrast to other global crises.
Just like the students in encampments on campuses, the physicians protesting this war are multiethnic and multireligious, and include many Jewish colleagues, reflecting the diversity of our health care worker community. Physicians across the country can learn much from those at U.C.S.F.
Amir Mohareb
Boston
The writer is a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
To the Editor:
When physicians think that the hospital in which they work has become an arena for political, social, cultural or any other kind of conflict, they run a grave risk of violating an important professional ethic.
Patients, especially the sickest ones, often quite literally place their lives in the hands of people they have never met and whom they have not chosen as their physicians. If physicians insist on bringing their personal views on foreign policy (and what hospital needs to have a foreign policy, anyway?), domestic politics, the culture wars or any other area of great controversy to the bedside, patients will be understandably and justifiably fearful that they will not receive the care and respect they deserve because of who they are or what they think.
We can’t and shouldn’t have separate hospitals for Democrats or Republicans; for Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus or atheists; for straight or gay people; for immigrants or native-born Americans; or for people who feel more sympathy or affinity for Israelis or Palestinians.
Physicians can of course hold whatever views they want on any issue of the day, but they need to leave those views in the parking lot when they report for duty. To provide the best possible care to those in greatest need, physicians need to learn to work across difference, and to see the patient in the hospital bed as no more, and certainly no less, than a human being who needs their help.
Neil W. Schluger
Valhalla, N.Y.
The writer is dean of the School of Medicine, New York Medical College.
To the Editor:
I feel beyond disheartened when learning over and over how individuals in this country are being harassed and bullied for expressing concerns and opinions. Universities and other institutions are being bullied into taking a stand regarding the Gaza crisis. Professionals within these institutions are bullied and harassed for expressing concerns and opinions. Old tropes regarding Jews are tolerated and billionaires are influencing decision-making regarding protesters within these institutions.
I never imagined that this would occur in my country, the supposed United States of America. Each side is preventing the other from exercising the right of free speech.
I fear that we are losing the ability to respectfully argue without shutting each other up. This is a recipe for the demise of our democracy.
Lorri Paulucci
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
At its best, the environment in which we care for patients is a sacred space that exists for the good of those patients and the support of their loved ones. Any practitioner or student who brings a particular political agenda into a hospital or clinic betrays the sanctity of those places. They have failed in their responsibility.
If one wears a hijab or kippah for religious or cultural reasons outside of the hospital, they should certainly be supported in bringing those elements of their spiritual sense of self into the health care environment. But political symbols (national flags, watermelon buttons, Trump or Biden buttons and even pro-choice buttons) should be left at home, even if one has “strongly held beliefs.”
Physicians are obligated to take care of patients with whom they might disagree on a number of issues. And they should take pride in that obligation and have the same pride in working alongside colleagues with whom they might have profound disagreements about politics or world events. Sacred spaces are fragile, and they deserve our vigilance to protect them.
Jonathan M. Rosen
Stamford, Conn.
The writer is an associate professor of medicine at the Connecticut campus of the Larner College of Medicine.
