career development
To Do’s Before Starting Residency
By Alyssa Brown Congratulations are in order for the many new women surgeons that will be joining our ranks as interns next year! Last year, I felt like time flew by between opening that envelope and starting intern orientation. The finish line of my intern year is in sight, and looking back now, there were so many things I wished I had or hadn’t done. Here is my unofficial guide to getting ready for residency. Do not study! This is one of the last times you will have time that is completely yours. You should not worry yet about how to study for next year or try to review for residency. The time will come for in-service exams, but that time is not now. Update your CV This is very lame to do, but it is important. It is helpful to start residency with an up-to-date CV. It takes time,...
Diversify Ourselves
By Dr. Chantal Reyna How well would you handle not being able to perform surgery anymore? The real question is “How much of your identity is based on being a surgeon?” We tend to define ourselves by our professions. Our profession has been a large part of our identity. We have dedicated our formative years to this profession. When we lose our profession, we lose a part of ourselves. It is a void; it is a hollowing. How can we put ourselves in a position where we still recognize ourselves if we lose a piece of our identity? Resilience is the answer. Resilience is flexibility. Resilience is adapting to unexpected changes, stressors, or adversity. Resilience is strengthened by diversifying ourselves and can be learned. We are the sum of many parts. Think about jigsaw puzzles or impressionist artwork. Each individual piece combines and interacts to build a structure that is...
Reflections and Advice from a Former Preliminary Surgery Resident
by Justine Broecker, MD Now that it’s post-match day, a day of celebration for many, I wanted to write a blog post focused on people who may or may not have felt as celebratory—specifically those who didn’t match into categorical surgery programs—as someone who similarly did not match into a categorical position. First of all, even though you may feel like you failed, perhaps for the first time in your life, let me assure you that you are NOT a failure. And, even though challenges are ahead, being a preliminary surgery resident is just the beginning and does not mean you can’t succeed. I wanted to write this post for several reasons—to acknowledge the challenges preliminary surgery residents face, to offer some advice as someone who has now successfully completed general surgery training, and to shed light on how the general surgery community can and should do more to support...
5 reasons I pursued an executive MBA and how it has helped me so far.
Heather Yeo, MD, MHS, MBA, MS Having recently (2019) completed an executive masters in business administration (MBA) program, I often get asked about why I pursued one in the first place, if I would recommend doing one, and how it has helped me so far. While there are many reasons for doing an MBA as a health professional, for me the decision was primarily focused on where I wanted my career to go and what I thought would be important to me, as I matured as a surgical attending. The top 5 reasons I pursued an executive MBA are: I wanted to set myself up for success. As a woman in academic medicine, I know that a future in leadership is challenging as most recent data show that Full Professors of Surgery who are women make up only 5 % of the workforce. I felt that by getting and MBA...
Tips for Returning to Work as a Lactating Resident
by: Samantha J. Baker I am a PGY-5 General Surgery resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and returning from maternity leave for my second child as this blog post is being published. I am currently in the midst of the feeding, pumping, middle of the night do I “wake or pump” mental tango, and planning logistics about how to return to work mayhem. I had my first child as a third-year resident and was fortunate to pump for a year. At that time I leaned on friends, family, and colleagues to figure out how to continue to provide breast milk as a resident. To be honest, when I started out I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. I hope that this blog post will help anyone who is looking for somewhere to start or maybe plan for the future. I am by no means...
Surgery Residency is Like a Family
By AlleaBelle Bradshaw, MD There are a lot of cliches from the interview trail, most of which are at least partially true. One of them is that residents and faculty will say something about how their residency is “like a family.” Of course, it is generally a positive thing that residents view their programs as families. I don’t mean to be the person that ruins this by taking it too seriously, but we should consider the meaning of something we have started saying almost automatically. I write to share my thoughts about what family means, how residency is like a family, and considerations for both residents and applicants when using the metaphor moving forward. My thoughts are colored by my personal experience with family. My family was a mostly traditional one with two parents and three kids. I am the youngest with two older brothers. We loved, learned, fought, and...
Challenges for women in surgery
By: Shiona Maria Benedict Fernandes “You will get married soon in the future. How will you be able to manage your family and your work life, if you choose this hectic lifestyle that surgery puts you through?” asked my mother back in 2020 when I had decided to tell her that being a surgeon was my dream. In addition to social deterrents, with women in surgery have also faced sexual harassment. Which has frequently gone unreported and and a well documented pay gap. It has been shown that lack of financial rewards and career advancement opportunities are two of the top challenges for female surgeons. In my opinion, medical schools and programs like AWS should create grants or scholarships for trans woman residents too. As to support their masters or research in surgery to encourage all women to continue their passion in surgery. The data is taken from Women in...
Finding Your Stage Presence
By Kimberly Lumpkins, MD, MBA I have a confession: I love public speaking. Standing on stage and feeling the audience connect with you is a magical experience. People often tell me that they couldn’t possibly be as comfortable on stage as I appear to be--that it must be some sort of innate and alien talent, but nothing could be further from reality. I began as a laughably awful public speaker, who was terrified of the stage. Back in high school, I joined the public speaking team where I was notable only for my abject incompetence. Memorized monotonous reading, check. A blizzard of “um” and “uh” peppered throughout every sentence, check. Gut churning nausea before every speech, check. I mutually parted ways with the team at the end of the year, in search of some other less miserable activity. So how did I progress from public speaking ignominy to finding genuine...
AWS Highschool Outreach Event: Becoming An Advocate For Women In Surgery
Earlier this year, I saw an opportunity to volunteer at the Association of Women Surgeons Highschool Outreach Event. I have never before come across a formal mentorship program for women high school students during my medical schooling in my home country, India. This made me curious, and I was very enthusiastic to get involved and contribute. The day consisted of impactful events, including guidance on crafting stories, speed mentoring, a suture workshop, and exposure for the high school students to some of the conference events, such as the Keynote Address and the Starr Medical Student and Resident Research Forum. The crafting stories session was highly informative and offered one on one guidance to the students. Dr. T. Salewa Oseni, a prominent breast surgical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, led the students through an engaging story about her path to medicine. She spoke of how she was sure about wanting to...
Trial by Fire
By Alyssa Brown I sat through orientation with a terrified look. We practiced placing central lines, arterial lines, and nasogastric tubes. They poured knowledge into us to try to prepare us, but I knew it probably wouldn’t be enough. I was starting my intern year in the surgical intensive care unit (SICU). The night before my first day in the SICU, I lay in bed and had questions flying through my head: would I be able to keep up? Would I be a good surgeon and resident one day? How bad is this going to be? Will people on the team like me? Will my black cloud have faded? My alarm jolted me awake as the sun started to peek through the blinds. I tossed on my scrubs and headed in. The SICU was packed with patients, nurses, and residents. The hustle of the morning and the newness of the...
