April 11, 2022
NORTH CAROLINA—Wake Forest University Medical School is standing by a student who admitted on Twitter she intentionally harmed one of her patients after he made fun of her pronoun pin.
Fourth-year med student Kychelle Del Rosario came under fire in late March after she bragged about intentionally harming a patient. The tweet was exposed by Libs of Tik Tok.
Del Rosario tweeted: “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?’ I missed his vein so he had to get stuck twice.”
A @wakeforestmed 4th year medical student says she abused a patient because he laughed at her pronoun pin. She has since deleted her account. pic.twitter.com/2m3DsjTFZx
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 29, 2022
Wake Forest University publicly responded to the incident in a statement on Wednesday, saying Del Rosario’s tweet was not an accurate recounting of the incident, according to FOX News.
Screenshot as now deleted. A response is needed from @wakeforestmed. pic.twitter.com/cbLJpJiSF4
— LaraJT (@mopseytoes) March 29, 2022
“Our documentation verifies that after the student physician was unsuccessful in obtaining the blood draw, the student appropriately deferred a second attempt to one of our certified professionals. The student did not attempt to draw blood again,” the school wrote.
The school’s statement also included a lengthy apology letter from Del Rosario, in which she magically claims she never intended to harm her patient, even though she admitted that she did.
“For the event mentioned in the tweet, I was performing a blood draw on a patient and during our conversation they had shown dismay at my pronoun pin,” Del Rosario wrote, according to the university newspaper. “I calmly shared my thoughts about pronouns and did not escalate the situation further. When I was doing the blood draw, I missed the first time due to my inexperience as a student, and per our policy, my supervisor performed the successful blood draw the second time. During this encounter, I never intended to harm the patient.”
“I am truly sorry for poorly representing our school and our health system. I will reflect on responsible social media use as a professional and my duty to care for all my patients, regardless of any differences of belief.”
Del Rosario received heavy criticism online, however, many fellow Wake Forest students jumped to her aid. They blamed her patient for being a bigot and that he deserved to be injured.
“The crux of the issue at hand is not the conduct of Del Rosario, but the bigotry expressed by her patient,” claimed the author, opinions editor, and sophomore Sophie Guymon. “It is appalling that the vast majority of the media coverage surrounding Del Rosario’s tweet is critiquing her lack of professionalism rather than her patient’s display of bigotry.”
Feature Screenshots via Twitter