Month: June 2017
Fireworks on the Fourth
By Cheyenne “Cassie” Sonntag, MD MS Say it with me: the Fourth of July. Just saying those words fills your mind with fond memories of watermelon, BBQ, and warm summer nights spent with family and friends lighting sparklers and setting off toy caps. It's a familiar story, relatable to most who read this – but one unfamiliar to me. Sadly, I spent a large portion of my childhood living in locations with strict fireworks restrictions due to dry desert climates. As such, my firsthand experience with fireworks and firework safety has been limited to setting up a proper picnic space in the park to avoid being trampled in the dark while still maximizing one's view of a public show. I was determined that this year would be different. My relocation to the lush lands of Central Pennsylvania for surgical residency and a favorable call schedule (about time!) has finally afforded...
A Medical Student’s Perspective: Reflections and Lessons from Rural Surgery
By Kaylynn Purdy I am, as far as anybody is aware, the first person from my small mining town in British Columbia to go to medical school. Growing up, my town was often in a state of physician shortage.We relied on a few long-term physicians who spent their entire careers there, but the rest seemed to come and go like the seasons. Whenever we lacked physicians, the suffering and frustrations in my community was evident.The rural doctor shortage in Canada is part of what motivated me to pursue a career in medicine. I wanted to serve the often-forgotten rural/remote communities, much like my hometown in Canada. Early in my second year of medical school, I felt like I had won the medical student lottery. I had gotten my top choice for my first month-long “Integrated Community Experience” in a rural town in Northern Ontario with a population of about 10,000...
#AWSEASTChat Wrapup
By Lillian Erdahl, MD The Association of Women Surgeons hosted its first joint tweetchat this week joined by the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Paula Ferrada, chair of the EAST Mentoring Committee hosted the chat joined by guests and EAST past-presidents Nicole Stassen and Kimberly Nagy. If you missed the chat, you can read this #storify for a recap of the #AWSEASTchat: https://storify.com/lillianerdahl/awseastchat-5937c42b5f3db4ab638f6bab#publicize As highlighted in Heather Yeo’s recent blog post1, the topic chosen was mentorship which is an integral part of the missions of both professional organizations. We know that mentorship and sponsorship are important to professional success for all surgeons. According to a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, women in academic medicine appear to receive less sponsorship from mentors then their male colleagues2. Partnering with another professional organization to discuss such mentorship in a surgical career provides a broader perspective on how mentors and...
May is Mentorship Month!
By Heather Yeo One of the most important factors in surgical training and a foundation along which much of our profession has grown is mentorship. Mentorship has many definitions, and a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece. The word Mentor was taken from the character of the same name in Homer’s Odyssey. Although it’s slightly a misnomer (as anyone who has worked with Dr. Murray Brennan knows), because Mentor himself was a bit of a fool, and it was actually the goddess Athena who took on the appearance of Mentor who guided the young Telemachus in his struggles. To me, mentorship is a relationship where one person shares their experience and knowledge with another person and helps to guide their career. The focus is on the career development of the mentee. Mentors can help with clinical, educational, research or personal growth. So how do you get started? Finding...
Taking Precautions for my Well-Being
By Beth Shaughnessy, MD, PhD As the deadline approached for this blog, I found myself preparing to go to Las Vegas for a conference, my mind numb with encroaching burnout. I knew the signs—chronic fatigue, growing apathy, lack of alertness, decreased ability to organize and be efficient. I trained in the era of no restrictions on work hours; hospitals used residents to fill in the gaps when they lacked personnel in transportation and phlebotomy, especially at charity hospitals. Burnout used to be a state of being back then, but it didn’t have a label. I love what I do. But I face intermittent burnout from being in a field that mandates high volume to meet the RVUs benchmark—breast surgery. This is usually manageable, but randomly cases may pile up as patients return from neoadjuvant chemotherapy and I must mesh these women into the operative schedule with the new ones referred...