By Simone Betchen, Jamie Ullman, and Martina Stippler
Women make up a small percentage (7%) of neurosurgeons in the United States according to the 2017 AAMC data. However, whenever I go to national conferences, if there are women speakers, it is limited to the same few people. Furthermore, women often find it more difficult to travel for a conference given family commitments and don’t have easy access to other means of networking with female surgeons or getting CME. This along with the inability to travel or hold conferences inspired us to start a quarterly virtual symposium entitled Women Neurosurgeons Symposium. This is a joint effort between Maimonides Medical Center, Northwell Health, and Women in Neurosurgery. The event will be free to students and residents and $10 for attendings.
The event will feature all female speakers and while anyone is welcome to attend, the target audience is female neurosurgeons at any stage of their career or those aiming to join us in support of our endeavors. Our topics will range from talks on spine and brain, to personal branding and surgeons in social media, to resident research night.
We are excited to announce the launch on October 14, 2020 at 7pm. This quarter our invited speakers are Odette Harris, Professor, Neurosurgery, Vice Chair, Diversity, and Director, Brain Injury at Stanford and Jenniefer Mieres (@DrJMieres), Sr. Vice President, Center for Equity of Care, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Northwell Health, and Associate Dean for Faculty and Professor of Cardiology at Northwell. Dr. Harris will be speaking on the gender effects of polytrauma and Dr. Mieres on the importance of gender diversity and inclusion in healthcare. Question and answer period will follow the talks.
We hope that this will be a lasting forum for female speakers to showcase their knowledge and skills for others to learn from in an environment that promotes listening and learning from one another and give all of us the opportunity to hear great speakers from those often missing on a national stage.
To register for this fabulous event, please click here.
To access the program brochure, click here.
Dr. Betchen is a board-certified neurosurgeon. She currently practices at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and is proud to have served the community there for a decade now. Dr. Betchen received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She did internship and neurosurgery residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. After completing a neurosurgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center she made the big move south to Brooklyn where she now treats a wide variety of clinical problems in both the brain and spine including tumors, hydrocephalus, chiari malformation, herniated discs, and spinal stenosis. Her research interests are in clinical outcomes and quality of life with neurosurgical treatment. Outside of the hospital she is married with two children.
Dr. Jamie S. Ullmann, MD, FACS
Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery
Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Northwell/Hofstra
Director of Neurotrauma, Northwell Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery
North Shore University Hospital
Martina Stippler, MD, FAANS, FACS
Director of Neurotrauma at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School
Chair, Women in Neurosurgery (WINS)
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.