We are celebrating five years of the AWS Inspiring and Encouraging Women Surgeons Blog!
First of all, we want to thank all of our members for contributing to the blog. You have shared your wins, hopes, concerns with us through candid pieces on the experience of being a Woman Surgeon.
When we started this blog in 2013, there were not many surgeons on social media or blogging yet. It would be an understatement to say we are proud of the success of our blog and how engaged our members and audience has become. We have grown from monthly pieces to bi-weekly and now weekly scheduled posts. We have also introduced special interest pieces like #AWSFood4Thought touching on current events and #DearPat which was introduced by the Residents & Fellows in AWS.
We have seen a radical change in the face of medicine. In 2017, a record 10,810 women matriculated into medical schools across the US, marking the first time that women surpassed the number of male medical students (10,516). Furthermore, we have seen a growing presence of physicians in social media. Our community has found a way to stay connected beyond annual meetings to ongoing virtual interactions via e-journal clubs, tweet chats, and blogging. We saw the rise of movements like #ILookLikeASurgeon, the #NYerORCoverChallenge, and #HeForShe. Recent reports suggest that women physicians can benefit professionally from a healthy social media presence.
In 2014, HCLDR opened up its weekly Tuesday night chats on healthcare leadership to discuss the increasing presence of women leading to the Changing Face of Medicine HCLDR chat. It was the first time many participants had engaged on that topic on Twitter and in a tweetchat format, particularly members of our professional medical organizations like AWS, AMWA, and WITS supported & participated in this inaugural chat. Four years later, we have a strong monthly #AWSchat and we would like to celebrate by partnering up with HCLDR again.
Join us on Tuesday August 21, 2018 at 830pm EST/530pm PST to discuss the ongoing changes to the face of medicine. Look for the questions from both the @WomenSurgeons and @HCLDR handles during our one hour online discussion. Be sure to follow me, @minervies as guest moderator for this celebratory tweetchat. We will be using both #HCLDR and #AWSchat hashtags so that the two communities can participate easily.
- How has your social media presence positively impacted you on a professional level?
- Has your social media community helped you deal with a real life issue?
- In the time you have been on social media, how has your perception of or attitude towards issues faced by Women Surgeons and other minority groups changed?
- What can we do to better engage with each other, the healthcare community, and patients on social media as well as in real-life?
Minerva A. Romero Arenas is an Endocrine & General Surgeon at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She completed a fellowship in Oncologic Surgical Endocrinology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. She completed her General Surgery Residency at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. She received her MD and MPH from The University of Arizona College of Medicine and the Zuckerman College of Public Health in 2009. She studied Cell Biology and French at Arizona State University as an undergraduate.
Her interests include surgical oncology & endocrinology, global health, health disparities, quality improvement, and genomics. She has been part of the blog team since its initiation in 2013. A native of Mexico City, Mexico, Dr. Romero Arenas is passionate about recruiting the next generation of surgeons and is involved in mentoring through various organizations. She enjoys fine arts, films, gastronomy, and sports. She enjoys jogging, swimming, boxing and kickboxing. Most importantly, Dr. Romero Arenas treasures spending time with her family and loved ones. You can find her on Twitter as @minervies.
Our blog is a forum for our members to speak, and as such, statements made here represent the opinions of the author and are not necessarily the opinion of the Association of Women Surgeons.