career development
Respect
by Erin W. Gilbert, MD “Your job gives you authority. Your behavior gives you respect.” —Irwin Federman, general partner at U.S. Venture PartnersThroughout my surgical training I blindly accepted that having grey hair (and experience) equaled garnering respect as a surgeon. Now that I am junior faculty at an academic institution (and beginning to grey myself), I’m wondering if there is more to the story. There is a noticeable difference in how residents treat me as compared to how they treat the Department Chair- which is of course OK by me, but I have begun wondering how can I ensure that I will achieve and more importantly maintain the same level of respect?As a medical student at LSU in New Orleans, we followed a very hierarchical system where the intern was the boss of the students, the junior was the boss of the intern and so on. It seemed to...
Creating your own academic timeline
by Christina Cellini, MD, FACS, FASCRS This topic came to me during a grand rounds given by a well-known surgeon in his mid-career - henceforth will be referred to as “WKS”. I had just returned from my second three-month maternity leave in two years and was looking forward to hearing about what advice he had to give. That morning WKS gave a talk about how he advanced academically starting from residency to his early attending years that eventually led to his promotion to associate professor. His talk was very informative, and he made a really big deal about being present for your family while trying to achieve your goals. All in all it was a thoughtful presentation. However a few things caught my attention and highlighted how everyone’s situation is unique. One piece of advice given was that one should constantly “be writing papers” and even to “get up at...
Lean In: Book Review & Discussion (Part Three)
by Sophia Kim McKinley, Callie Thompson, MD, and Minerva Romero Arenas, MD, MPHChapter 8: Make your partner a real partner (Callie)By nature, women are charged with carrying the child, birthing the child, and feeding the child (if one so chooses), resulting in an uneven distribution of work between a couple from conception. This chapter discusses some of the author’s personal struggles with being a new parent and the division of labor and responsibility in her relationship. Data show that in heterosexual couples, when both work outside the home, the women does 30-40% more of the childcare and housework, and as recently as 2009, only 9% of dual-earner marriages said they split the work evenly. As a surgeon, I would suggest that this needs to be acknowledged and discussed prior to starting a family with a spouse/significant other. When a couple is discussing having children, there can be a lot of...
