Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Distorted Key Parts of Her Résumé
Nesheiwat falsified, misled, selectively omitted, or lied about her medical education, board certifications, and military experience
By Anthony Clark
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, an urgent-care physician and former Fox News medical contributor1 who is President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general of the United States, has over at least the last 15 years falsely represented or obfuscated facts about her medical education, board certifications, and military service.
The surgeon general is a vice admiral in the Commissioned Corps—a uniformed service of medical, health, and engineering officers within the U.S. Public Health Service working throughout the country—who protects and promotes the nation’s health, issuing advisories and reports directly to the public. The position has a term of four years and requires Senate confirmation. Federal law requires that the nominee have “specialized training or significant experience in public health programs.”
Nesheiwat has carefully crafted a narrative over many years about who she is and how her career came to be, changing it over time, adding more details that do not match verifiable facts, and altering some claims, but always with the apparent purpose of seeming to be more successful and credentialed than she is.
UPDATE 6:15 pm EDT April 20, 2025: neither the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, VillageMD, nor Dr. Nesheiwat replied to requests for comment today.
“University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Doctor of Medicine - MD, Medicine”
Medical education and training
Physicians who earn a medical degree from a US-accredited medical school, complete a one-year internship, and pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination may generally be licensed to practice medicine in a state. According to official records, Nesheiwat is currently licensed to practice medicine in four states and the District of Columbia (although it appears she is actively practicing only in New York at this time).
Many physicians also complete a residency in a medical specialty, a process that can take three or more years in total, and is separate from becoming board-certified.
Nesheiwat and others contend that she earned her medical degree from a school in the southern United States. On her verified2 LinkedIn profile, under “Education,” she clearly lists “University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Doctor of Medicine - MD, Medicine”.3
And in the main part of the profile, at the top, she lists “University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences” (and no other school) which links directly to the Education section below.
In a 2022 interview with the Nashville Voyager, Nesheiwat is quoted as saying, “I went to the University of South Florida In Tampa and eventually on to the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences where I completed my medical training in Northwest Arkansas.”
In his statement announcing his intention to nominate her, President-elect Trump called Nesheiwat a “proud graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.”
But Nesheiwat did not earn a medical degree from the University of Arkansas
for Medical Sciences, nor was she a student at that school.
She calls herself, on her X account, a “Medical @UAMS alum.”
But Nesheiwat did not earn a medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, nor was she a student at that school.
She obtained her medical degree from another institution, one outside the U.S., and later completed a family medicine residency at a program at what was then called an Area Health Education Center (now a Regional Campus) of UAMS.
Residents in a program associated with a university are generally considered employees, not students.4 Those who complete such programs do not graduate from the university, and they do not receive a degree.
Clinton D. Everhart, Ed.D., Assistant Provost for Enrollment Services and University Registrar at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, wrote the following in an email in response to questions about whether Nesheiwat had earned her medical degree from or had ever been a student at UAMS:
I cannot provide any education records information for the individual requested. Please note that education records are maintained only for a student’s education program, which involves academic coursework and requirements to earn the degree or credential.
Medical residency records, however, are not considered education records under FERPA, and are maintained as part of an individual’s employment record at the institution where the residency was completed.
Nesheiwat gave a somewhat different account in a December 2018 Facebook post, where wrote that she completed her “medical training and residency at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences near Little Rock where I served as Chief Resident. Initially pursuing training at the American University, I completed the majority of my studies in London, England…”
Despite her apparent attempt to separate “medical training” from residency—and characterizing what she did at both UAMS and “the American University” as “training”—the only medical training that Nesheiwat appears to have received at UAMS is the residency in family medicine she completed at the associated AHEC.
According to multiple official records in several states, Nesheiwat did obtain her degree from the American University—the American University of the Caribbean, that is (AUC), and not the American University in Washington, DC (which does not have a medical school). AUC, unlike most medical schools in the U.S., is a commercial business.
Operating in Sint Maarten, AUC was founded in 1978 and has, since 2011, been part of Adtalem Global Education (formerly DeVry Education Group), a large corporate provider of for-profit education.
For more than 100 years, such medical schools were banned in the United States over concerns about admissions criteria and the quality and adequacy of their education and training.
According to the New York State Education Department Office of the Professions, Nesheiwat received her medical degree in 2006 from the AUC School of Medicine.
Docinfo.org—a database of verified information that the Federation of State Medical Boards operates—also lists AUC as the school from which Nesheiwat graduated, in 2006.
And the practitioner profile attached to her Florida medical license shows that Nesheiwat completed her medical degree at AUC in six years—rather than the standard in the U.S. of four years—beginning on August 28, 2000, and graduating on April 1, 2006.
These sources directly contradict Nesheiwat’s public claims—that others have repeated—about having earned her medical degree from and being a graduate of UAMS.
Nesheiwat does not list AUC, the school from which she obtained her medical degree, on her personal website or in most of her social media posts. Neither has she apparently mentioned it in most of her media appearances as a TV doctor.
In the “Interests” section of her LinkedIn profile, under Schools, Nesheiwat lists the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—twice—as well as two schools she attended as an undergraduate (from one of which she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology), but she does not include AUC.
On her Facebook profile, under Work and Education, Nesheiwat lists only “Fox News,” “Studied at University of South Florida,” and “Studied at UAMS - University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.” She does not mention AUC in that section.
“board-certified emergency medicine and family physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat”
Board certification and medical practice
Many physicians complete a residency—which can last three or more years—in a specialty, and most who do pursue board certification to demonstrate expertise in that specialty, improve job opportunities, gain hospital privileges, meet insurance provider credentialing requirements, and—crucially—enhance patient trust. However, no U.S. state requires board certification for licensure to practice medicine.
For years, Nesheiwat has claimed to be, or has been introduced and described as, a “double board-certified,” family and emergency medicine physician. Her personal website reinforces this, describing her career as spanning “emergency care, family medicine, and disaster relief response,” and states she is “saving lives in the ER.”
The November 2018 version said she was, among juggling other duties, “an ER physician working shifts in the Emergency Room.”
Nesheiwat and others have claimed numerous times some variation of her as being a Family and Emergency Medicine Physician, or a Family and ER Physician, or “a board-certified family and emergency medicine doctor in New York City.”
In many news interviews, press releases, and stories about Nesheiwat, she is described and introduced as varying forms of a “board-certified medical doctor of family and emergency medicine.”
During a CBS News interview from November 5, 2019, anchor Anne-Marie Green introduces Nesheiwat in-studio as a “board-certified medical doctor of family and emergency medicine.” As Green says this, Nesheiwat can be seen nodding. The chyron below includes “Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a board-certified physician in family and emergency medicine, joined ‘CBSN AM’ to discuss.”
In an October 2024 appearance on the daytime talk show Sherri, host Sherri Shepherd introduced Nesheiwat, sitting next to her in the studio, as “board-certified emergency medicine and family physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat.” Throughout the introduction, Nesheiwat can be seen smiling and nodding.
In an another October 2024 interview, with Fox News, anchor Eric Shawn introduces her as “family and emergency medicine doctor Janette Nesheiwat.” She can be seen wearing a white physician’s coat that appears to have “Family & ER Medicine” stitched below her name on the upper right.
In her profile at the speakers bureau All American Entertainment—updated November 20, 2024 (two days prior to her nomination)—she is described as a “double board-certified medical doctor and seasoned public speaker with expertise in emergency and family medicine care.”
As late as December 1, 2024, days after her nomination, she listed “Family & ER Medicine” on her homepage (by December 2, 2024, that had changed to just “Family Medicine”).
According to multiple official sources that verify physicians’ credentials, Nesheiwat holds only one active board certification recognized by the main certifying bodies, and it is not in emergency medicine; it is in family medicine.
Nor, as far as can be determined, does she currently work in an emergency department, and she has apparently not done so in perhaps a decade or more.
Nesheiwat works for CityMD, a for-profit chain of urgent-care centers in New York, as a physician and medical director. Though she has said she worked in emergency rooms in Arkansas after completing her residency (which I was unable to verify despite requests to those hospitals for information), she has reportedly been at the New York chain since 2012.
Her New York medical license physician profile, last updated August 17, 2021, lists “Family Practice” as the Primary (and the only) Field of Practice. (However, in the equivalent section of the listing for her California medical license, issued on June 8, 2021, Nesheiwat includes Emergency Medicine as her secondary area of practice).
In her New York profile, under “Professional Memberships,” she lists “AAFP” (the American Academy of Family Physicians), but no memberships in any other organizations, such as those representing additional medical specialties. And she reports having no hospital privileges anywhere in the state, which emergency medicine physicians would tend to have.
“Nesheiwat holds only one active board certification recognized
by the main certifying bodies, and it is not in emergency medicine”
Even so, VillageMD, the parent organization of CityMD, posted this note on November 23, 2024: “We’re thrilled to share some incredible news, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat our esteemed emergency medicine physician and medical director at CityMD, has been nominated for the position of United States Surgeon General. Congratulations on this wonderful accomplishment!”
That statement quoted a post from CityMD, which begins: “Exciting news! Our very own CityMD emergency medicine physician and medical director, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat has been nominated for United States Surgeon General. Dr. Nesheiwat is a highly regarded physician in the field of emergency medicine…”
Dr. Steven H. Miles, a professor emeritus of medicine and bioethics and double board-certified physician, explained in an email why doctors who are not board-certified in emergency medicine may not call themselves “emergency medicine physicians.”
“A physician without board certification in emergency medicine may not present to a patient as such,” Miles wrote, “because the patient is being misinformed of the training, experience, and assessed competence of the physician, and therefore cannot give a proper informed consent to examination and treatment.”
The Rules of the New York State Board of Regents prohibit physicians from performing services they are not competent to perform, and bar false, fraudulent, or misleading advertising, including unsubstantiated professional claims.5
And New York State law says in part:
(b) A physician on behalf of himself or herself, or partners or associates, shall not use or disseminate or participate in the preparation or dissemination of any public communication containing statements or claims that are false, deceptive or misleading.
(c) Advertising or other publicity by physicians, including participation in public functions, shall not contain puffery, self-laudation, claims regarding the quality of the physician's medical services, or claims that cannot be measured or verified.
(d) It is proper to include information, provided its dissemination does not violate the provisions of subdivisions (b) and (c) of this section, as to education, degrees and other scholastic distinctions; dates of admission to practice; areas of medicine in which the physician practices . . .
“Well, that’s fraud. And if I were still there and presented
with this information, I would prosecute that physician.”
When asked about the hypothetical of a physician licensed to practice medicine in New York who represented publicly that they had earned a medical doctorate from a school from which they had not, and held a board certification they did not, a former experienced attorney with the New York State Department of Health Office of Professional Misconduct (who asked not to be named due to the possibility of an investigation) said, “Well, that’s fraud. And if I were still there and presented with this information, I would prosecute that physician.”
That office’s website has a page titled, “Fraud in Medicine” that was last revised in July 2012, the year Nesheiwat reportedly began working as a physician in New York. It defines fraud as: “Conduct intended to deceive.” Among the examples of medical fraud it lists are: “False and intentionally misleading statements to patients” and “Lying about credentials or qualifications.”
All three major certifying bodies—the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Osteopathic Association, and the American Board of Physician Specialties—provide easy public verification of board certification. According to these services, Nesheiwat does not hold an active board certification in emergency medicine from any board under those bodies.
Separately, both the American Board of Emergency Medicine and the American Board of Physician Specialties independently confirmed that Nesheiwat does not hold board certification in emergency medicine, and that they have no record of her ever having held that certification.
Physicians seeking certification under ABMS boards—the most widely recognized—must first successfully complete an accredited residency in the individual specialty.
Some independent organizations—not created under ABMS, ABPS, or AOA-BOS—provide certifications that physicians may obtain without necessarily having completed a residency in the specific specialty, and with varying requirements.
One such independent body, the American Board of Urgent Care Medicine, offers certification options to licensed physicians who meet certain eligibility requirements. Nesheiwat appears to have obtained this certification.
The “News and Notes“ section of the board’s website, abucm.org, includes the following statement: “Congratulations to Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, ABUCM Diplomate, on being nominated to serve as the next Surgeon General of the United States!” The statement links to a Reuters article about Nesheiwat’s nomination that does not mention her certification from ABUCM.
Unlike widely recognized certification bodies, the ABUCM does not offer direct verification of a provider’s board certification to the public; it requires the requester to include the express written consent of the physician in question in order to accept a verification request. I was therefore unable to determine conclusively whether Nesheiwat holds urgent care certification from ABUCM.
“An urgent care is a health care facility in which you can walk in without an appointment for medical issues that are not immediately life-threatening”
Urgent care is not a recognized specialty under ABMS or AOA-BOS, and there are no accredited urgent-care residency programs in the U.S. (ABPS once offered physicians who met certain eligibility requirements a board certification in urgent care, but as of June 2022, no longer accepts initial applications for it.)
Emergency medicine differs significantly from urgent care in a number of important ways. Even Nesheiwat herself made the clear distinction in a November 1, 2021, promotional article for another VillageMD subsidiary.
“An urgent care is a health care facility in which you can walk in without an appointment for medical issues that are not immediately life-threatening,” the page quotes her as saying. She also noted that even if a patient sought treatment at an urgent care center for a life-threatening issue such as an asthma attack or an allergic reaction, staff would still transfer that patient to an emergency room after stabilizing them.
Though Nesheiwat has claimed to be double board-certified—and has apparently not corrected members of the media when they have introduced her as having board certification in family and emergency medicine—she does not mention what appears to be her sole secondary certification (from ABUCM) at those times, nor on her personal website, nor on her social media accounts and in public appearances.
Some states limit what physicians may advertise regarding board certifications, most often related to whether or not they are from recognized bodies. The ABUCM website notes that Texas and South Carolina allow their diplomates to advertise as being “Board Certified in Urgent Care Medicine,” but does not currently mention any other state. It is perhaps for this reason that Nesheiwat does not make what could be her ABUCM certification public. However, she has repeatedly been described as being “double board-certified.”
And in addition to not practicing or being certified to practice emergency medicine, Nesheiwat does not currently practice family medicine, either—the one specialty in which she completed a residency and holds her single, widely recognized board certification.
Family medicine differs significantly from urgent care.
In a 1981 journal article, Dr. Ian McWhinney, founder of modern family medicine in Canada, set out the principles of the specialty, which contrast greatly with the services, settings, intent, and capabilities of urgent care:
Nine principles of family medicine can be described: an open-ended commitment to patients; an understanding of the context of illness; the use of all visits for preventive purposes; the view of the practice as a population at risk; the use of a community-wide network of supports; the sharing with patients of the same habitat; the care of patients in office, home and hospital; a recognition of the subjective aspects of medicine; and an awareness of the need to manage resources.
“After graduation she completed advanced officer training…”
Military experience
On several websites and in interviews over at least the last fifteen years, Nesheiwat has given the impression that she completed U.S. Army Reserve Officers Training Corps and went on to advanced officer training, but ultimately decided not to continue her military career.
Students participating in ROTC are cadets, not officers, and are not members of the military.
Nesheiwat has stated that she enrolled in the Army ROTC as an undergraduate. It is unclear whether she received an ROTC scholarship, and that program did not respond to a request for information. Whether or not they are on scholarship, students who complete the program incur an obligation of service.
However, Nesheiwat was never an officer in the U.S. military, and that she did not become one around the time she was an undergraduate was a decision that the Army made for her.
On her personal website as recently as November 29, 2018, Nesheiwat’s bio made a distinction between ROTC and later training, suggesting she had completed the former and moved on to the latter. “Although she received stellar evaluations through her military training in both Army ROTC and in the advanced elements,” it stated, “Janette was determined to become a doctor...”
“[Nesheiwat] was medically disenrolled…”
An April 2010 article in CitiScapes Metro Monthly, Northwest Arkansas magazine said that Nesheiwat “enrolled in Army ROTC as a medic.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Cadet Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky, clarified, “We do not assign cadets as medics… in our ROTC programs… cadets are not designated as medics while in ROTC.”
The 2010 CitiScapes article adds, “After graduation she completed advanced officer training at Fort Lewis, Washington. Though encouraged to pursue a military career, she instead chose to follow her dream of becoming a doctor…”
Cadet Command did confirm that Nesheiwat “completed every step of the [ROTC] program.” However, it went on, Nesheiwat “was medically disenrolled in June of 2000 prior to commissioning into the Army.”
And according to a spokesperson from the U.S. Army Human Resources Command at Fort Knox—which holds the records of all Army officers who commissioned since at least 2000—there is no record of Nesheiwat ever having served in the Army, either as an enlisted soldier or a commissioned officer.
ROTC cadets do not undergo “advanced officer training,” and the Army disenrolled Nesheiwat without her having become an officer. So it is unlikely she could have completed any training as an officer, as she has appeared to have claimed.
The Army did not specify the reason for medical disenrolling Nesheiwat, nor could it confirm or deny if Nesheiwat ever fulfilled the obligation, in some way other than serving as a commissioned officer, that she incurred by having completed the ROTC course , or if the Army provided her a waiver upon medical disenrolling her in 2000.
And it is unclear if the unnamed medical issue played a role in the extended period of time she took to complete her medical degree, which began just months after her disenrollment.
“My dream was to become surgeon general of the US.”
Surgeon General
The position for which the Senate may soon consider her is not unfamiliar to the nominee. In a glowing cover story in the October 2019 issue of Metropolitan 25A Luxury Magazine, editor Adam Kluger quotes “someone so accomplished” as Nesheiwat having “even higher goals.”
“My dream,” she says, “was to become surgeon general of the US.”
It seems inevitable, now, that the long arc of the fable of Janette Nesheiwat was, for quite some time, headed here—or somewhere like it.
But Nesheiwat is a single-specialty doctor who was not able to commission as a military officer; obtained her medical degree outside of the U.S.; became a walk-in-care provider who also sells a health supplement and was for a few years an on-air contributor to Fox News; has apparently not published in any medical or other scientific journals; and has no apparent credentials in public health.
Such individuals do not so easily rise to a position of great trust and authority as the surgeon general.
So it appears that someone—perhaps Nesheiwat herself—may have decided that her real story had to be… augmented.
When asked why a nominee for the position must have earned the trust of the American public, Dr. Miles, the bioethicist, replied,
The U.S. Surgeon General is the U.S. government’s voice of honestly presented science. When that voice is corrupted by professional misconduct such as misrepresenting his/her own professional education, accreditation, and experience, the public may become cynical about the medical advice of that official. Public mistrust of the Surgeon General can harm the public health.
Even if everything Nesheiwat and others have said about her education, credentials, and military experience had been true, accurate, and complete, she would arguably be the least-qualified surgeon general in the modern history of the office, if not out of all to have held the position.
Antonia C. Novello was first a practicing board-certified pediatrician with a fellowship in nephrology. Years before her nomination, she commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, working in the National Institutes of Health. As a Congressional fellow, Novello helped draft and pass the legislation that created the national transplant registry. She earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University, and was a clinical professor at Georgetown University Hospital. She went on to become the deputy director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH, focusing on pediatric AIDS.
Novello accomplished all of this before President George H.W. Bush nominated her, twenty years after earning her medical degree, as the first woman and first Latina to serve as surgeon general.
Julius B. Richmond was a flight surgeon in World War II, interrupting the second of his two residencies in pediatrics to serve his country. After the war, he completed the second, and became a professor of pediatrics. His applied research into pediatrics and psychology showed how poverty negatively affected child development, which led to him being asked to serve in the White House Office of Economic Opportunity. There he co-created and led two major public health programs: Neighborhood Health Centers for low-income families, and Project Head Start. He later was a professor at Harvard University, and led an organization promoting the mental health needs of children.
Richmond accomplished all of this before President Jimmy Carter nominated him, 38 years after earning his medical degree, for the post he would use to become the most forceful anti-smoking surgeon general in history.
C. Everett Koop completed his surgical training in half the time it took surgeons in the 1940s to do so. He became Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s surgeon-in-chief when he was only 29. Among other innovations, he pioneered the operation to separate conjoined twins, was instrumental in establishing the field of pediatric surgery, and created the first neonatal surgical intensive care unit in the U.S., greatly improving public health.
Koop accomplished all of this before President Ronald Reagan nominated him, 40 years after earning his medical degree, for the job he would remake as the 13th—and arguably most influential—surgeon general.
Importantly, what Nesheiwat apparently lacks is what the position seems to urgently need. According to the website of the Department of Health and Human Services,
As the Nation’s Doctor, the Surgeon General is charged with protecting and improving the health and safety of the American people… The Surgeon General has been the nation’s leading spokesperson on matters of public health since 1871.
And while urgent-care physicians do offer health care services to the public, the American Public Health Association makes a clear distinction between health care and public health:
The health care industry treats people who are sick, while public health aims to prevent people from getting sick or injured in the first place.
Public health also focuses on entire populations, while health care focuses on individual patients.
And the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh explains how public health is different from medicine:
Under these and other common understandings of the discipline, Nesheiwat has no apparent formal education, training, or experience in public health—a cornerstone of the position, and a statutory requirement for being nominated; if confirmed, she would head the U.S. Public Health Service, where she would be expected to be able to motivate and guide “public health officials on urgent public problems.”
Nesheiwat has no apparent record of publishing—which would demonstrate not only scholarship, but leadership; securing funding for, organizing, conducting, collaborating, reviewing, and making results public adds to the profession and advances public health.
Nesheiwat does have a record, though: of grossly misrepresenting and obfuscating her medical degree and board certifications; credibility, as well as the ability to promote the nation’s health through evidence and persuasion, is essential to the surgeon general’s moral authority.
She also has a record of providing incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading information about her uniformed experience; the USPHS is a uniformed service, and the surgeon general a vice admiral.
The Partnership for Public Service—a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to improve the federal government—found in 2024 that “Fully 58% of survey respondents [18 - 34-year-olds] chose ‘transparency and honesty’ among their three key qualities for trustworthiness” in government, placing those characteristics well above subject matter expertise and political neutrality.
Nesheiwat has more than once publicly shared her views about transparency and honesty in social and other media.
On her X account, @DoctorJanette, on November 29, 2018, she replied to a tweet about Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen, writing, “Honesty is still the best Policy.”
In response to a November 10, 2020, tweet from President Donald Trump alleging election fraud in Detroit, Nesheiwat stated, “Honesty is always the best policy,” adding an American flag emoji.
The same month, tweeting a Fox News article about a New York Times’ correction of a story, Nesheiwat wrote, “Honesty. Facts. Always. Approx 60k kids hospitalized w #Covid not 900k”
Minutes after blogger Katie Pavlich shared an article about Facebook from the right-wing website Townhall on June 2, 2021, Nesheiwat replied, “Americans deserve Honesty & Transparency. Nothing less.”
When Pavlich made a disparaging comment in October of that year about journalist Katie Couric, Nesheiwat tweeted—again, minutes later—”America deserves honesty & facts, always.”
One of several prayers Nesheiwat offers in her late-2024 book, Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine, comes in Chapter 7.
It reads in part, “Dear Lord, we pray that you may use us as vessels of truth; where there is misinformation, may we provide facts. We pray for the virtue of honesty. May our words always be truthful and trustworthy.”
In the book’s Epilogue, Nesheiwat warns about disinformation. “‘A lie can travel halfway around the world before truth gets its boots on’ is an old and alarmingly correct saying,” she writes. “For reasons not well understood, people tend to gravitate to falsehoods rather than truths…”
She continues her theme by reminding readers, “The Bible encourages believers to speak truthfully to one another and avoid falsehoods: ‘Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body’ (Ephesians 4:25 NIV).”
And, perhaps most importantly, in the June 6, 2024, Fox News article, “Short questions with Dana Perino for Dr. Janette Nesheiwat,” Perino asked her, “What traits do you think are essential for effective leadership in the medical field?”
Nesheiwat’s answer?
“Being a role model and leading by example, plus honesty and dedication. We take a Hippocratic Oath and, unfortunately, as in any field in life, there are the good, the bad and the ugly.”
An article on FoxNews.com dated November 22, 2024, and timestamped 8:03 pm EST, announcing her selection, describes her as a “former Fox News medical contributor.” In a tweet timestamped 9:36 pm EST that night, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported he had been told by a Fox spokesperson that Nesheiwat was no longer a Fox News contributor “as of tonight.”
On its verifications explanation page, LinkedIn states, “An identity verification means that a member’s government-issued ID was verified by one of LinkedIn’s verification partners. . . . In the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, the identity verification is performed by CLEAR, a third-party identity verification service. It’s available for those with a valid government-issued ID and a personal phone number registered in either the U.S., Canada, or Mexico.”
Throughout this article, all quotations from and descriptions of information found online are current as of the time of publication, except where otherwise noted and/or linked to archived versions.
A 2017 federal court ruling—Doe v. Mercy Catholic Medical Center—determined that medical residency programs have an educational component, and therefore could be subject to Title IX. But in practice, physicians in residency programs associated with a university are not traditionally considered students, and UAMS considers residents in its associated programs as employees.
8 NYCRR § 29.1(b)(9) and (b)(12).
*Note: this article was updated on April 20, 2025 to reflect the fact that none of the principals contacted for comment replied.
Thank you for this well reported story. I'm Board Certified in Family Medicine, with subspecialty certifications in Geriatric Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. I also am Board Certified in General Preventive Medicine. Putting aside her politics, I am disgusted by physicians who exaggerate or outright lie about their credentials. Not enough journalists appear to know how easily physicians' credentials can be verified. For anyone who is interested, I recommend certificationmatters.org
Interesting, compelling article. One question I have after reading it: is there someone behind the scenes promoting her and, if so, who? Certainly, it might be her Fox News credential that made her attractive to Trump for Surgeon General. But Trump is what is euphemistically called transactional, so I wonder if anyone is legally bribing Trump to promote her? Family money?