By Brooklynn Ginsburg, The Seattle Medium
Dr. Dorender Gray said she chose women’s healthcare to take care of Black patients in a medical system that can overlook or mistreat them. But the former resident said her mission was derailed at the University of Washington Medical Center when she became entangled in a program she was referred to after struggles of her own.
In February, Gray and another former UW medical resident who worked at Harborview Medical Center, Dr. Temi Ogunleye, filed a class-action complaint against the Washington Physicians Healthcare Program (WPHP), a nonprofit program for healthcare providers who experience workplace complications.
In a recent interview with her attorney present, Gray recounted her experience with WPHP, which began in 2024 during her second year of an obstetrics-gynecology residency at UW hospital. Gray said she became depressed and requested time off to attend therapy, in part, after an attending physician told her she didn’t provide feedback to residents of color. Instead, according to the lawsuit, her program supervisor mandated that Gray receive medical clearance from WPHP before returning to her residency.
Neither doctor remains in residency at the UW. Ogunleye relocated out of state to finish his, and Gray is no longer in residency anywhere. According to the lawsuit, after a variety of shocking missteps the WPHP overcharged her with a practitioner’s rate rather than a resident’s rate for their services without notice, and the lack of payment and subsequent lack of clearance to return to work eventually resulted in her termination.
A King County Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit in late May. WPHP asserted that they were generally immune from civil action under state law. Daniel Mensher, one of the Keller Rohrback attorneys working with the doctors, said of the ruling: “We disagree, and we’re not done.
“WPHP has mistreated them and many other doctors and residents terribly. And I am ready to help them in their efforts to hold WPHP accountable,” he said.
In a written statement, WPHP said “For more than four decades, the Washington Physicians Health Program (WPHP) has supported the health and well-being of physicians and other healthcare professionals across Washington state, helping individuals navigate complex challenges such as substance use and mental health conditions while prioritizing safe, high-quality patient care.”
The statement continued: “WPHP has been named in a recently filed legal complaint. The court dismissed the complaint with prejudice on May 25, 2026, based on WPHP’s statutory immunity. Although we cannot comment on the specifics of the litigation pending a possible appeal and due to confidentiality protections, we believe the claims are without merit.”
The lawsuit sought a class on behalf of people who were participants in WPHP between 2015 and now.
Gray and Mensher declined to comment on whether the residents’ experiences could be attributed to their race. Still, Gray offered: “Wherever you go, systemic racism is present, and it will be present at all levels.”
Gray looks back fondly at her time in residency, recounting the connections she made with her patients. She’s proud that she was able to make them feel safe in their moments of uncertainty.
“The work was very meaningful,” Gray said. “It’s something that I think about to this day. If someone would allow me to go back to my training and say, ‘It’s going to be brutal; we will throw every hurdle at you and you will be mistreated,’ I would still happily accept. That’s how passionate I am.”
She said she was drawn to the UW program because of the closeness to home and her family: “Having support from my family was very important to me,” Gray said. “I ended up going to UW for undergrad, medical school and residency.”
In March, social-media influencers in Seattle and around the country seized on Gray’s story and the lawsuit following a GoFundMe campaign started by Dr. Pamela Wible,an advocate for physician mental health and long-time critic of physicians health programs. Gray says Wible has now become a close friend and confidant.
The effort raised enough money to pay off Gray’s student loan debts, according to updates on the GoFundMe page.
According to the lawsuit, WPHP, a program meant to help healthcare providers with physical and mental struggles, mishandled both residents’ referrals. Both Ogunleye and Gray were sent into substance-abuse treatment, despite a lack of evidence that either had issues with drugs, according to the lawsuit.
“It felt very invasive,” Gray said of the drug testing.
The lawsuit narrative says that after tests found no evidence of drug misuse in either residents’ cases, WPHP administered neuropsychological exams. Both exams, according to the lawsuit, were returned to Ogunleye and Gray full of false information and alarming mental-health diagnoses.
While both doctors have long been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, the exam results posited new diagnoses that disallowed a return to their UW residencies, according to the lawsuit.
Both doctors noticed that information about them in the results was untrue or wrong. For instance, according to the lawsuit, Ogunleye’s results included the incorrect birth date, age and hand dominance. Gray’s results said that she suffered trauma from her brother attempting to take his own life, something that did not happen.
Additionally, Gray was seen virtually by psychologists from an addiction-treatment center in Colorado. Gray never left the state during these evaluations and learned that the psychologists performing them were not licensed to practice in Washington, according to the information in the lawsuit.
“Why is it that we have so many medical centers here in Washington, and none of them are eligible under WPHP?” Gray said in the interview. “I think part of the reason is, WPHP sends its participants to their preferred sites, and these sites are oftentimes drug rehab programs.”
Gray and Mensher said they intend to spark a change in access to mental-health resources for medical professionals. Gray said she hopes people don’t end up stuck in a program that doesn’t suit their needs like she was with WPHP.
“One of the misrepresentations that WPHP makes and seems to base a lot of its work on, is that somehow doctors are special in their mental-health and/or their addiction needs,” Mensher said.
Gray said she is currently training to become a full-spectrum doula, in part to stay connected to the patient population she enjoys.
“My goal hasn’t changed; it’s always been to figure out how to get back to training, and how to continue taking care of patients,” Gray said. “It’s just going to be a different path, and that’s something that I’m trying to figure out now.”
