Month: May 2023
The Association of Women Surgeons National Medical Student Committee
By Charlotte Smith, Gopika SenthilKumar, Paulina Gutkin Fostering a community intended to elevate women medical students is vital not only for increasing representation within surgery, but also building and strengthening professional and interpersonal connections among the future generation of surgeons. The AWS National Medical Student Committee (NMSC) is a collaborative of 27 medical students from across the United States and five international regions. We are incredibly excited to introduce the 23’-24’ NMSC members. The committee plans and coordinates national and local initiatives designed to engage medical students with the parent AWS organization and its values: engage, empower, and excel. Our main projects can be divided into the following categories: Research and Resource Development We use our strength as a diverse committee to brainstorm and execute research projects related to the main mission of AWS. In 2022, we published our paper “Comparison of Male and Female Surgeons' Experiences With Gender Across...
Forget About Perfectionism; Instead, Strive for Excellence
By Fara Bellows, MD As surgeons, we are high-level performers who expect specific results from precise planning and execution. Throughout our education, we developed a keen awareness of the requirements for a particular outcome. Some of us may have even over-prepared during our academic years in order to ensure success. The stakes are much higher when practicing medicine, and we may now strive for perfection, as we know that a single misstep can result in a devastating patient outcome. Fortunately, we remain inherently detail oriented, thorough, and conscientious when providing patient care. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have bad outcomes. Even a patient who undergoes a technically flawless operation can have complications. So how do we reconcile our desire for perfection in an uncontrollable world? Essentially, we must learn to comfortably co-exist with our negative outcomes and accept the fact that bad things will happen. The only way to...
The Identities We Choose
By: Heather Wachtel, MD Growing up in Vermont, I had one person who looked like me – my sister. The children of a first generation Cantonese immigrant and a second generation Russian Jew, we loved the freedom of the rural countryside which our artist parents had embraced. However, when we returned to New York to visit our extended family, we alternated between eating dim sum with chopsticks in crowded restaurants on Mott Street, and celebrating the Passover Sedar on Long Island. As a result, we could protest that we were too full to eat any more in English, Yiddish, and Cantonese! Although I treasure my diverse heritage and the warm, loving acceptance of both sides of my family, to be mixed race is also to feel as though you never fully belong. As with many mixed race children raised between cultures, I learned instinctive code-switching from an early age. Code-switching...
THE MATCH EQUATION: AN IMG’S PERSPECTIVE
by: Anjani H Turaga, IMG The day starts at 5 am on an unusually cold morning in Los Angeles, where we see our protagonist, an IMG (International medical graduate) brushing her teeth furiously, trying her hardest to pay attention to the video lectures playing in the background, all while checking her clock to make sure she has enough time to reach the hospital before her preceptor. The physical exhaustion that comes with having only a few hours of sleep is overwhelming, yet she remains focused on her goal: matching into a residency program in the United States. While at first glance, the scene above seems overwhelming, it is a reality that every medical student, irrespective of their location, experiences in the year leading up to the Match. Our protagonist's journey is made more complicated, however, with her decision to to pursue a surgical residency program as an IMG. The uphill...
Finding Myself: A Korean-American Adoptee’s Reflections on Identity, Loss, and Purpose
By: Elizabeth Lilley, MD, MPH Many people are surprised to learn that I am both a surgeon and a palliative care doctor. Although the number of surgeons pursuing fellowship training in palliative care continues to grow, it remains a rare combination, with fewer than 100 American physicians carrying dual board certification in surgery and palliative medicine. For me, this dual professional identity is rooted in my heritage as a Korean-American adoptee. I left a foster home in Korea – the country of my birth – when I was three months old to join my new family in America. Growing up, my dual identity as a Korean daughter to white American parents felt natural and right, and also led to some confusion. As a young girl, I once used modeling clay to sculpt myself a Caucasian nose so I could look more like my mother. On the other hand, when I...