reflection
The Balance Beam
By Sara Ashai There are days where everything goes wrong, but there are also days where everything goes right. Most days, we sit somewhere in the middle. Our voice stays quiet some days, some days it wants to yell, and some days our voice yells at ourselves. When I was a first year medical student, I was quiet. I came straight through undergrad and was one of the youngest in the class. I felt scared to speak up. I came into medical school wanting to do psychiatry. Interpersonal skills with patients are one of my strengths and I was passionate about mental health, so I thought psychiatry fit that scheme. As the first year continued, I spoke to residents who told me that there was a need for more Pakistani women to go into OB/GYN or any surgical field. Thus, I considered it quietly. Never did I consider myself to...
Waiting Your Turn: Part 2
By Alyssa Brown In 2019, I stood by and watched as my friends and classmates matched. It was the spring of my first year in the PhD program. I had made the flight down to watch them match. It was a bittersweet feeling to see my medical school friends find their new homes. It made me acutely aware that they were passing me by. On the plane ride back to Minnesota, I wrote about this experience. I also wrote about my anxiety of returning to medical school in 2021 and knowing no one. That Match Day made it very real for me. This year, it was my turn. I had applied, interviewed, and ranked programs. I had gone on second looks, and I spent the last day before certifying my list on the phone agonizing over rankings of different programs. Some of the same thoughts ran through my head. Would...
Is Surgery for Me?
By Ariana Naaseh, MD I was one of the medical students who always swore there was absolutely no way I’d become a surgeon. I’d heard too many stories about surgeon personalities and the terrible attempt at work/life “balance” the career afforded. Rumors consisted of surgeons yelling at staff and trainees, throwing instruments in the operating room, or belittling or ignoring medical students. Surgeons were rumored to have no continuity of care and operate solely as technicians. On my first day of my surgery rotation, I walked in with low expectations. Much like most medical students, I expected to wake up too early, stay too late, eat no food, never use the restroom, and be yelled at or made to feel silly at some point in the day. Throughout the course of my 8-week rotation, I was pleasantly surprised and absolutely enamored. I encountered surgeons who asked me my name, ensured...
Pursue Your Passion with Purpose
By Megan Jenkins Turner, DO Growing up, my dad always told me “endeavor to persevere.” I can honestly say I had no idea what that meant until recently. Particularly when I found myself unmatched after graduating medical school in May 2021. It was March 2020. I was an M3, four days into my General Surgery rotation, when COVID pulled medical students from in person rotations to online ones. This remained the case for several weeks. I was planning on becoming a medical oncologist, fervently preparing for the match - I never considered pursuing surgery until I was pulled from my rotation. Long story short I ended up applying for internal medicine (IM), interviewing for IM, and subsequently withdrawing my application from the match in January 2021 all because one of my mentors saw a talent in me that at the time I had yet to see in myself. I attempted...
Nothing to Prove: Supporting Each Other as Female Surgeons
By Meredith Taylor, MD One of the most difficult aspects of surgical training is taking critical feedback, synthesizing it, improving from it, and—most importantly—not taking it personally. In my second week as co-senior in the surgical intensive care unit, I have been challenged immensely by the patient care, acuity of problems, and rapid decision making it takes to keep everyone safe. With COVID-19 cases on the rise amongst our faculty, staff, and residents, our teams are a little smaller, and my team is currently a group of all female residents and fellows of mixed disciplines. My co-senior is a brilliant cardiothoracic surgery resident who can probably get central access in someone without blood vessels, and the first year is an orthopedic surgeon who is already adept at spotting fractures in any plain film, at any angle. Our fellow can operate and make clinical decisions without hesitation, and her compassion for...
Musings of a Surgeon
By Dr. Sandra Krishnan "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” ― Rudyard Kipling ‘Do you want to do surgery?’ ‘Yes, very badly.’ ‘Anticipation is one of the most important qualities a surgeon must have and you anticipate instinctively, I am sure you will make a great surgeon.’ This was a conversation that took place 20 years ago, etched into my brain and effortlessly, I am transported back to the scene. Three of us in a procedure room, an extremely senior and intimidating plastic surgeon, a patient, and the lowly intern, myself. The plastic surgeon was about to remove her dressing, it was standard; plastic surgeons perform intricate wound reconstructions. Sometimes they are grafts, a piece of skin harvested from one part of the body and sometimes flaps, tissue thicker than skin; regardless of what method is used. The recipient site is looked after gently to...
You can’t be what you can’t see.
By Sheina Theodore, MD I was born and raised in NYC. The product of two Haitian immigrant parents. I saw my parents sacrifice everything for me, just so that the playing field would be leveled. I was fortunate to have them pushing me and making it possible for me to seize many opportunities. One of which was my acceptance into The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, a B.S./M.D. program whose mission was to increase the number of minority physicians in order to care for underserved communities. Through this program, I participated in many community outreach efforts. These efforts were centered around understanding the barriers to health care, treating the patient as a whole (understanding different cultures, beliefs, socioeconomic situations, and how all this can deeply affect the overall wellbeing of our patients), and recruitment of future leaders who will aid in carrying out the mission of the school. I...
The True Cost of ABSITE Prep
By Martha Godfrey Everyone thinks in dollars and cents when it comes to the cost of preparing for the American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination (ABSITE): $150 for a textbook, $295 for a question bank. While there are always financial considerations made when developing a study strategy, the true cost of a better ABSITE score is quantified not in dollars, but rather in minutes. Studies have shown that residents who spend more time studying for the ABSITE tend to do better. This is certainly not surprising. Unfortunately, this means when a resident is asked to score above a certain percentile on the ABSITE, they are functionally being asked how many more minutes than their peers are they willing to devote to studying for a standardized test. It serves as an annual opportunity to demonstrate how much more a resident (and potentially their families) are willing to give up for the...
Celebrating our Past, Transforming our Future: Reflections on making the AWS 40th anniversary celebration video
By Tiffany J Sinclair, MD As a member of the AWS Residents and Fellows committee, I had the privilege of putting together a video in celebration of AWS’s 40th anniversary that will be presented at the upcoming conference. I am by no means a professional video editor, but it is one of my hobbies and I was excited to have the opportunity to pay homage to our wonderful organization. In honor of the conference’s theme “Celebrating our Past, Transforming our Future,” several other members of the committee and I decided to interview a few of our past presidents for the video. We wanted to hear about their favorite AWS memories, their most meaningful experiences, and their thoughts on where our organization is headed in the future. In total, we interviewed five of our past presidents: Drs. Patricia Numann, Margaret Dunn, Leigh Neumayer, Beth Sutton, Myriam Curet, as well as our...
My Favorite Weekend of the Year
by Kathleen Romanowski, MD Since I attended my first Association of Women Surgeons (AWS) Annual meeting 6 years ago, the weekend before the American College of Surgeons meeting in October has become one of my favorite weekends of the year. The feeling of attending this meeting can be hard to describe to those who have never had the opportunity to attend, but I will try. Imagine walking into a surgical meeting. You look around surveying the room, looking for a place to sit, maybe trying to see if you know anyone there. As you look around you realize that this meeting has a very different look to it. Instead of the usual sea of black suits with a few pops of color, you encounter a sea of color with a few dark color suit spots. Rather than a largely male crowd, you are surrounded by a multitude of female faces...
