Physician, heal thyself!” Jesus said to those gathered in the synagogue at Nazareth.
The admonition was aimed at hypocrisy and moral blindness — a warning that those who presume authority must first examine their own conduct.
Today, someone needs to repeat those words to health care professionals who have allowed Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) to corrode their ethics and professionalism.
That warning applies just as much to nursing as it does to medicine.
Nursing emerged as a modern profession in the mid-19th century under the leadership of Florence Nightingale. In 1893, the Nightingale Pledge codified the profession’s moral foundation, committing nurses to “devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care” and to “do no harm.” Compassion, neutrality, and duty were not optional — they were the profession’s reason for being.
The American Nursing Association Code of Ethics requires, “The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.” I presume groups include Republicans, Trump supporters, and ICE agents.
Medicine, with nursing as one of its pillars, exists to heal the sick and comfort the vulnerable. While some may be drawn to health care for technical challenges, flexible schedules, or job security, the vast majority of nurses enter the profession with sincere intentions to help others. That shared moral commitment is what allows patients to trust those caring for them during moments of fear, pain, and helplessness.
Which makes the following question unavoidable: Why are some nurses now publicly calling for the torture, abuse, and death of people whose political views they dislike?
As a surgeon, I can state unequivocally that political affiliation does not alter human anatomy, physiology, or disease. Blood vessels do not constrict based on voting history. Tumors do not grow faster in conservatives. Gravity, bullets, and blunt trauma are blissfully indifferent to ideology. Health care professionals are expected to be the same -- delivering the best possible care regardless of race, religion, class, or politics.
Yet Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached pandemic levels among a militant and increasingly visible cadre of health care professionals, infecting even those entrusted with others’ lives. Increasingly, a vocal minority of nurses and other health care workers - individuals granted extraordinary access and authority -- openly fantasize about harming political opponents. This is not merely unprofessional behavior. It is a profound ethical failure.
Consider the case of a nurse at Virginia Commonwealth University Health who was fired after posting TikTok videos suggesting ways to harm ICE agents. This was not abstract rhetoric. She proposed injecting agents with succinylcholine, a neuromuscular blocking agent that causes complete muscle paralysis, including of the respiratory muscles. Without ventilatory support, the result is death. The drug has long been described as an “ideal murder weapon” precisely because it leaves little external evidence.
A trained nurse would understand this. Which makes her suggestion all the more chilling. This was not ignorance. It was medically informed malice.
The nurse also suggested filling water guns with poison ivy or poison oak extract to spray into agents’ faces. If that proved ineffective, another nurse recommended that single female nurses use dating apps to lure ICE agents out for drinks, spike those drinks with laxatives, and incapacitate them. Nurse Ratched, reporting for duty.
This nurse likely entered the profession with altruistic intentions. But the TDS mind virus transformed her from caregiver to would-be executioner -- all while basking in the applause and clicks of social media.
These nurses are not alone.
An Ohio nurse publicly wished that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would suffer a fourth-degree perineal tear while delivering her second child. Such an injury involves tearing through the vaginal wall, anal sphincter, and into the rectum -- requiring surgical repair and risking lifelong fecal incontinence and sexual dysfunction. This is not casual cruelty. It is grotesque medical sadism.
A Florida nurse echoed the sentiment in even more graphic terms, writing online: “I hope you f*cking rip from bow to stern and never sh*t normally again, you c*nt.” This is the language of hatred, not healing. Yet it came from someone entrusted with patient care and human well-being.
Not surprisingly, her Florida nursing license was promptly revoked.
If a family member of mine were hospitalized, these are precisely the nurses I would hope not to encounter.
Then there is Erik Martindale, a Florida nurse anesthetist, who publicly declared that he would not provide anesthesia for “MAGA” patients, claiming it was his “ethical oath” to do so. He later suggested his account had been “hacked,” a defense now as familiar as it is unconvincing.
Would Mr. Martindale allow a conservative patient to awaken during surgery -- a rare but devastating complication -- and consider it justified? Would pain control become a political privilege? Once ideology dictates care, there is no logical stopping point. History offers grim reminders of where that road leads.
Defenders of such conduct often invoke “free speech.” But health care is not a college quad or faculty lounge. The American Nurses Association Code of Ethics explicitly requires compassion and respect for every patient, regardless of “social or political status.” Political discrimination is not protected expression within the profession. It is an ethical violation.
We saw a preview of this moral decay during COVID. Remember the TikTok nurses dancing in hospital corridors, turning intensive care units into makeshift discos? I understand the stress health care workers endured during the early pandemic. Blowing off steam is human.
But broadcasting choreographed routines to millions, while families were barred from visiting dying loved ones, signaled something deeply wrong. I was one of those family members. Watching nurses dance for clicks while patients died alone was neither comforting nor inspiring. It was alienating.
In 2018, a Georgia dermatologist lost her medical license after filming and social media posting herself singing and dancing over sedated patients during surgery. Was that performance meant to prepare her for operating or to monetize social media attention? The line between professionalism and narcissism had already been crossed.
Health care is not activism. A hospital is not a protest rally. A patient is not a political avatar.
The moment a nurse or physician begins sorting patients into deserving and undeserving categories based on ideology, the profession ceases to be one of healing and becomes something far more dangerous. History offers grim reminders of what happens when medicine is subordinated to political belief rather than ethical duty.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is not merely a cultural punchline. In health care, it manifests as moral corrosion. It replaces compassion with contempt, restraint with rage, and professionalism with performative cruelty. It convinces otherwise decent people that harming others is virtuous so long as the target is politically acceptable.
Patients do not arrive at hospitals as Republicans or Democrats. They come frightened, vulnerable, and often powerless. They must trust that those caring for them will place duty above ideology. Once that trust is broken, the entire system rots from within.
“Physician, heal thyself” was not simply a rebuke. It was a warning. If health care professionals cannot diagnose their own moral sickness, they risk becoming the very thing they once swore to oppose. Nurses and doctors must decide whether their highest allegiance is to politics, or to the sacred obligation they voluntarily assumed.
There can be no coexistence between political hatred and medical ethics. One of them must give way.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on X @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph, and email brianjoondeph@gmail.com.
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