Black ER Doctor Says an Arizona Hospital Sidelined Him After He Tweeted About a Lack of Hospital Beds

Dr. Cleavon Gilman, an emergency-medicine physician who has been outspoken about the dire conditions in American hospitals due to the coronavirus pandemic, says he was barred from returning to work at Yuma Regional Medical Center in Arizona after tweeting about shortages in hospital beds last month. Suggested Reading Three Friends Were Headed To A Beyoncรฉ…

Dr. Cleavon Gilman, an emergency-medicine physician who has been outspoken about the dire conditions in American hospitals due to the coronavirus pandemic, says he was barred from returning to work at Yuma Regional Medical Center in Arizona after tweeting about shortages in hospital beds last month.

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According to Gilman, the healthcare staffing company he works for, Envision, told him the day after his tweets were posted that the hospital didnโ€™t want him to come back to work.

On Nov. 22, Gilman posted on Twitter, โ€œJust got to work and was notified there are no more ICU beds in the state of Arizona.โ€

โ€œWhat happened to the 175 beds??? We likely donโ€™t have nursing to staff them,โ€ he added in a follow-up tweet. As the Arizona Republic reported, the stateโ€™s Department of Health Services at the time reported that 90% of ICU beds were in use.

https://twitter.com/Cleavon_MD/status/1330896313551085574?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Gilman, who is Black, told the Republic that he was able to finish his shift that day โ€œwithout a problem.โ€ But since then, he has not been called back in to work.

โ€œThey told me it was because of the tweets and I couldnโ€™t believe it because that was accurate information I posted to inform the citizens of Arizona,โ€ he said. โ€œIt is a grave injustice and itโ€™s not just happening to me. Doctors everywhere are afraid to speak up.โ€

โ€œWhat I donโ€™t understand about this is I have been advocating for Arizona; I have been calling for a mask mandate, the closure of schools and indoor dining,โ€ Gilman told the local news outlet. โ€œI did all of this because we are seeing an unprecedented number of cases. This is my third surgeโ€”I know how this ends.โ€

Gilman noted that hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers have been forced to step away from the front lines after 10 months of fighting COVID-19. Many have gotten sick or died from the coronavirus, and many others are burnt out from the toll of the work. Gilman said it was a โ€œslap in the faceโ€ to sit on the sidelines for โ€œno reason.โ€

In an interview with the Washington Post Thursday night, Gilman reiterated his claims, telling the paper, โ€œThe hospital is intentionally hurting me financially for speaking out, and Iโ€™m not permitted to work.โ€

The hospital contradicted Gilmanโ€™s statement in a statement released online late Thursday night, claiming โ€œthere has been a misunderstandingโ€ and Gilman is scheduled to work this weekend.

โ€œNews to me,โ€ Gilman tweeted in response.

https://twitter.com/YumaRegional/status/1337287072286187520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

As Gilman noted, healthcare workers in other parts of the country have said theyโ€™ve faced professional repercussions from speaking out about conditions in the nationโ€™s hospitals. As the Post reports, one emergency physician was fired for criticizing a Seattle hospitalโ€™s ER precautions in March, as the state became the nationโ€™s first COVID-19 hotspot. Later, in May, a D.C. hospital worker filed a lawsuit saying she lost a job under similar circumstances (the hospital claims the employee has not been fired).

Dr. Gilman is still sounding the alarm about COVID-19, which Americans are contractingโ€”and dying fromโ€”at alarming numbers as each week passes. On Dec. 4, the rate of new coronavirus cases reached an all-time high for the pandemic, with more than 231,000 positive results in a single day.

โ€œThe death toll during the entire Iraq War was equivalent to what we see now every single day,โ€ said Gilman, an Iraq War veteran. โ€œYou could leave a war zone if you couldnโ€™t handle it. COVID is everywhere.โ€

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