AWS & AWSF News:

• SBAS & AWS are pleased to announce the call for the 2024 Visiting Professor.
• Join the AWS Blog Subcommittee! Email your interest today.
• AWSF Looking Forward to Move Forward: Dr. Anna Olds
  
  

Calls for Entry & Opportunities:

• April 25: Call for AJS abstract reviewers closes. Must be an AWS member - join today.
• April 25: Institutions are invited to apply to host AWSF Visiting Professor Dr. Plichta.
• May 2: Submit an abstract for the AWS Edition of The American Journal of Surgery. At least one author must be an AWS member - join today.
• May 2: Deadline to apply for the Breaking the Glass Ceiling Leadership Education program. Must be an AWS member - join today.
• May 4: LSS & AWS Visiting Professorship application due. Must be an AWS and LSS member - join today.
• May 23: AWSF Award nominations due.
• June 3: SBAS & AWS Visiting Professorship application due. Must be an AWS or SBAS member - join today.

Programs:

• April 29 at 7pm ET: AWS Medical Student Data Mania (register)
• May 6 at 6pm ET: AWS Reviewer Academy (invitation only)
• May 8 at 7:30pm ET: AWS Publications Webinar - Using Pens, Not Knives (register)
• May 9 at 8pm ET: AWS Journal Club (register)
• May 14 at 8pm ET: AWS Resident & Fellow Committee Meeting (register)
• August 14 at 7:30pm ET: AWS Publications Webinar - Finding Your Job (register here)
• October 18 & 19: 2024 AWS Annual Conference in San Francisco, California (mark your calendar)
• October 20: The 2024 AWS Foundation Annual Dinner & Gala (mark your calendar)

Partner Organization Updates:

• AAS: The Association for Academic Surgery seeks to inspire and develop young academic surgeons. Learn more on their website.
• AWMA: Members of AWS can get a complimentary affiliate membership in the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA)! Learn more here.
• AOSA: The Association of Out Surgeons & Allies is an organization of LGBTQ+ Surgeons and allies which promotes acceptance, inclusion, and equity in the surgical specialties to further learner engagement, support individual clinicians and researchers, and build a community. Learn more here.
• ASA: Applications for the 2025-2027 American Surgical Association Foundation Fellowship Research Awards are open through June 15.
• LSS: The Latino Surgical Society is partnering with AWS to offer a Visiting Professor program in 2024. Apply by May 4.
• SAAS: Deadline extended! Submit an abstract by April 29 for the 9th Annual SAAS Meeting. 
• SBAS: The Society of Black Academic Surgeons is partnering with AWS to offer a 2024 Visiting Professor program. Learn more here.

The Society of Black Academic Surgeons (SBAS) and the Association of Women Surgeons (AWS) Visiting Professorship

Call for Applications

Description:
To provide active SBAS and AWS members who are faculty members at the rank of Associate Professor and within 15 years of their faculty appointment the opportunity to serve as a Visiting Professor for the Department of Surgery at a host institution. The host site application will open soon.

Dr. Julie Samora is a pediatric hand surgeon at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH, where she is Associate Chief Quality Officer and director of quality improvement within the department of orthopaedics. She received her orthopaedic training at Ohio State University and completed a fellowship in hand and upper extremity surgery at Harvard.  She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, a Master of Music at Yale University, and an MD/PhD at West Virginia University, where she concomitantly earned a master of public health and public administration.  Dr. Samora is a founding member of Pride Ortho, has previously served on the Board of Directors of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society (past president) and the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (member-at-large), and is currently on the BOD of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.  She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is co-editor of the Springer textbook: Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in Orthopaedics.  Dr. Samora has a passion for providing safe, efficient, culturally sensitive, and excellent patient care, focusing on best practices and quality improvement initiatives.

You Are Not Broken

Author: Kelly Capserson, MD
Book Reviewer: Sarah Suhood, OMS III

Author Bio

Dr. Laura DiChiacchio is a current cardiothoracic surgery fellow at the University of Utah Hospital. She will graduate in June and then join Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as an advanced fellow in thoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support. She completed her general surgery training at the University of Maryland/R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, MD. She is a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she completed a PhD in Biophysics, Structural & Computational Biology before falling in love with surgery at the end of her clinical rotations. During her general surgery training, she spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in the cardiac xenotransplantation laboratory of Drs. Muhammad Mohiuddin and Bartley Griffith, cementing her relationship with cardiac surgery and thoracic transplantation. She is a happy wife and proud mother to her son Henry.

National Institute of Health CSR Reviewer Pool

AWS Members Can Apply by January 31 for Quarter 1

The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) has requested recommendations for AWS members willing and qualified to serve in the NIH CSR Reviewer Pool. Interested candidates are asked to complete the submission form below.

Nominated scientists should meet the following criteria:
• willing to serve as reviewers
• seen as experts, with integrity, in their field.
• have an active research program, extramural funding, and not currently be a standing member of an NIH study section or advisory council.
• productive scientists from diverse backgrounds and career stages – e.g. assistant, associate, and full professors.

Dr. Meredith Baker MD, pediatric surgeon and attending physician at Maine Medical Center, grew up in the state of New Hampshire. She recounts following her veterinarian father around in childhood and that for as long as she can remember, she wanted to be a “doctor for human children.” However, it was not until medical school that she realized the type of doctor for children she wanted to be was a pediatric surgeon.

“Become the Boss MD: Success Beyond Residency”

Author: Amy Vertrees

Book Reviewer: Denise Nemeth, OMS III

Dr. Christen Russo is an attending orthopaedic surgeon and associate professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). She specifically focuses on pediatric orthopaedics, and outside of the clinic she has established herself as a prominent leader and mentor within the orthopaedics community. Dr. Russo graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in English Literature & Literary History, after which she earned her M.D. at SUNY Downstate. She completed a general surgery internship at Brown University followed by orthopaedic surgery residency at SUNY Downstate and pediatric orthopaedics fellowship at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/CUIMC. In addition to her clinical and university positions, she currently serves as the President of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society, an organization that aims to support women and minorities in pursuing careers in orthopaedic surgery. 

Physician Scientists are uniquely positioned to bridge scientific discovery and clinical care. As such, our training involves learning clinical skills, understanding how to design and test hypotheses, as well as mastering the art of writing and presenting our findings. While these are crucial for developing our clinical-care skills and research acumen, there are innumerous other professional opportunities that physician scientists often partake in, including national or institutional leadership, medical/graduate education, outreach and mentorship, policy/advocacy, industrial consulting, and entrepreneurship. As such, training MD-PhD students often requires a personalized approach that empowers them to gain the skills necessary for their unique career interests.

Behind Her Scalpel: A Practical Guide to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery with Stories of Female Surgeons 

Authored and Edited by Cathy Hung, DDS

Dr. Cathy Hung is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and a solo practice owner in New Jersey. She is a native of Taipei, Taiwan and came to the US alone at age eighteen on a student visa. She earned her BS in psychology with a minor in music from UC Berkeley and DDS from Columbia University. She received her OMFS training from Lincoln Medical and Mental Center in the Bronx, New York. She is an alumna of the American Dental Association’s Institute for Diversity in Leadership program. She is also a speaker, writer, and Certified Life Coach in cultural competency. She is an author, blogger, and selected member of Forbes’ Women Forum and Rebecca Minkoff’s Female Founders Collective.

"Letter to a Young Female Physician: Thoughts on Life and Work" by Dr. Suzanne Koven

Dr. Suzanne Koven begins her essay collection, “Letter to a Young Female Physician: Thoughts on Life and Work”, as one might expect – with a letter.[1] As she watches a crop of incoming interns write letters to their future selves, she reflects on her own career: the pressures she faced to prove herself, to value her skills, and to serve her patients well. This was in 2017, and it seems anecdotally that the call for reflection has come earlier and earlier in medical training in recent years. As a medical student (still a year away from intern orientation), I’ve participated in innumerable letter-writing exercises just like the one that inspired Dr. Koven. In this book, Dr. KoveN shows us why these reflections are so important. Dr. Koven describes a background caught between the arts and the sciences. As the daughter of an orthopedic surgeon, surrounded from an early age by men who practiced medicine, she always had an idea of the role of the doctor. Whether she saw herself in that role is a bit more complicated – in her book, she details the struggles that she felt in her early science courses, that science felt “unnatural” to her, despite her earning good grades. She attended Yale for college, where she studied English Literature. She then went on to Johns Hopkins for medical school and residency in primary care internal medicine, after which she joined Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital where she is now Writer-in-Residence.[2]

Dr. Jennifer Plichta is a breast surgeon at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, North Carolina. She graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana and completed her residency at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois. She completed her fellowship training in breast surgical oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Plichta is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Population Health Sciences at Duke University, and she serves as the Director of the Breast Risk Assessment Clinic and Co-Director of the Clinical Cancer Genetics Program at the Duke Cancer Institute. In addition, Dr. Plichta takes time to mentor many students throughout different stages of training at Duke University School of Medicine. She also helps to educate her local community about breast cancer and breast health.

Mentor Spotlight: Dr. Minerva Romero Arenas

Dr. Romero is an Endocrine and General Surgeon at NYP Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. She is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Romero Arenas completed a fellowship in Oncologic Surgical Endocrinology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. She completed her General Surgery Residency at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. She earned her Medical Doctorate and Master of Public Health degrees from The University of Arizona College of Medicine and the Zuckerman College of Public Health. She studied Cell Biology and French at Arizona State University as an undergraduate.

BOOK REVIEW: A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student by Dr. Perri Klass

Reviewed by: Ariana Ginsberg

An Interview with Dr. Diana Gabriela Maldonado Pintado

Letter to a Young Female Physician 

Book written by Dr. Suzanne Koven
Review provided by Charlotte B. Smith