Kentucky Board of Nursing retracts ‘implicit bias’ training requirement after media coverage

The Kentucky Board of Nursing has retracted a controversial “implicit bias” training after the licensing requirement garnered significant media attention.

A report from the Washington Examiner on July 28 highlighted September reports from medical advocacy group Do No Harm that the Kentucky Board of Nursing had issued a requirement for licensed nurses to complete an “implicit bias” training, citing a capture of the Board’s website in August 2022.

The training included “highly racialized content” that sources told the Examiner had “very little to do with nursing.”

In another report, authorities at the Kentucky Nurses Association told the Examiner that “best intentions will not solve implicit bias in healthcare.”

Technically, it didn’t threaten anyone, the KBN said. However, Kentucky can revoke medical licenses since, as the Examiner gathered, “Kentucky law refers to the training ‘as a prerequisite for license renewal.’”

The threat of revocation creates a perverse incentive, especially as the KBN failed to specify what it described as “disciplinary settlement” or “written reprimand,” when pressed by the Examiner.

As reported by Do No Harm, just two days after the Examiner published its report, the KBN edited its homepage (compare July 27 to July 28) to reflect that the implicit bias training was no longer mandatory.

Do No Harm is made up of “physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers” seeking to “protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology,” 

”In states that require continuing education hours to maintain licensure, the nurse who fails to do so will not have his or her license renewed,” Do No Harm program manager Laura Morgan, told the Examiner. “Kentucky is no exception to this. The words ‘mandatory’ and ‘required’ are very well-defined.”

The Kentucky requirements continue down a long-established trend of leftist “training” sessions in post-secondary education. Previous reporting by Campus Reform has covered how various schools implement mandatory training prorgams before enrolling.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, required students to take Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training before they could enroll in any further classes.

[RELATED: Ole Miss students ‘required’ to complete ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ training]

Oklahoma University required a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training course in which the instructor dismissed “All Lives Matter” as an illegitimate claim.

More recently, the State University of New York announced that it would require a DEI and social justice course for incoming “associate and baccalaureate degree seekers enrolling in fall 2023.”

[RELATED: Vanderbilt uses ‘Feelings Wheel’ for diversity training]

“The deadline for the one-time Continuing Education requirement on Implicit Bias was July 1, 2023,” the KBN’s website read as of July 28. “If you have not obtained the training at this time, please note you will no longer be required to do so. Licensees will still be required to obtain all other applicable CE training.”