Month: February 2020
The Token Foreigner
By Patricia Martinez Quinones “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” - Ralph Waldo Emerson Imagine receiving an email that you have been selected to present as an invited speaker at one of the largest surgical meetings. That feeling of excitement, a sense of pride, knowing all your hard work is paying off. You are wandering the hallways of your hospital and run into a senior male member of your department. Unable to contain your emotions, you share the good news, only to be met with a response of “well, looks like you’re the token foreigner.” Certainly not the response you were hoping for, not a “congratulations” or “job well done.” Your excitement, happiness and pride are now replaced by feelings of self-doubt and you sense the imposter syndrome creep back in. As a Latina in surgery my...
Being Non-Traditional in a Historically Traditional Field
By Jackelyn Moya My first memory of being in a space where I was treated in a “traditional” manner was during my senior year in high school. My counselor was creating my schedule for my final year and deciding whether he should place me in statistics or physics. I remember his words, “I doubt you’ll ever need physics in your life, so I’m placing you in statistics for your fourth class.” Without having any input from my 17 year-old self of what I planned on pursuing after high school, I accepted his statement as truth and thought, “hmm, When will I need physics?” I suppose that for my high school counselor, my traditional path would not require taking physics, so he placed me in what he assumed would be a more traditional class for me. I always knew that I loved science and wanted to be a doctor, but the...
Confessions of an Ill-Equipped Third-Year Medical Student
By Alyssa Brown “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong”, called the attending from his swivel chair. It was my first day of third year. I had been placed at the Veterans Association hospital (VA) for a cardiology rotation. It was the last week of June, so our residents were well prepared for anything that came their way. Looking at it from their point of view, they went from having almost fully fourth-year medical students, who were prepared, knew what to do and what not to do, to two fresh out of Step1 third-years, who had no idea at all. I remember googling the night before, what to put in the pockets of my white coat. I scrolled through reddit and student doctor network looking for a sign or post to assuage my nerves. I found no salvation there. I had shadowed/precepted plenty during first and second year, probably to an absurd degree,...
Mentorship: Vital to Women on Both Sides of the Relationship
By Erin M. Corsini, MD and Mara B. Antonoff, MD As surgical trainees, we have a tendency to think of mentorship as a one-way street, a gift that is bestowed down from those with great experience to those seeking to climb to such ranks in the future. However, successful mentor-mentee relationships should be rewarding for both parties, and can be especially meaningful between women navigating specialties in which they are underrepresented. As excitement builds leading up to the next AWS chat on mentorship, we’d like to share perspectives from both sides of the relationship and some fodder for contemplation. “In the months prior to beginning my first year as a clinical research fellow at a new institution, I was in my second trimester of my first pregnancy – a reality that had not previously been evident when I interviewed for the position. This was how I would begin my 2-year...
Finding Our Way Back to Translational Research
By Anna Garcia Whitlock, MD Banting - Metabolism, Huggins - Oncology, Murray - Immunology. These are three of the nine surgeons who’ve won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. To me, it seems only natural that surgeons would carry research from the bedside to the bench and back again. Not only are surgeons required to have an extraordinary command of human physiology, but they are among the few individuals who bear witness to function and pathology in action. Surgeons actually see, hold, and experience science in the operating room, providing the unique opportunity to evaluate mechanism and foster discovery in real time. Unfortunately, surgeons also experience some of the most profound barriers in the pursuit of research, in particular, basic science – a phenomenon that must be stopped. Research support for surgeons is fading. A report from the Society of University Surgeons found that the proportion of NIH funding...