John Rombeau & Amy Goldberg & Catherine Loveland-Jones by Surgical Mentoring: Building Tomorrow's Leaders

Author:Surgical Mentoring: Building Tomorrow's Leaders [Leaders, Surgical Mentoring: Building Tomorrow's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Surgery, Colon & Rectal, General
ISBN: 9781441971906
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2010-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

How to Mentor Women Surgeons More Effectively

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encouraged to join societies such as the American College of Surgeons, the Association of Women Surgeons and Association of Academic Surgery. These organizations have entry level memberships, minimal dues, and programs specifically directed to young surgeons. The mentee is subsequently introduced to a new world of surgery beyond her institutional experiences. Most importantly, communication is established with a peer group of both future and current surgical leaders who, in some instances, will be mentors, advisors, confidants and friends for life.

Mentees should be encouraged to lead formal case discussions, and present at morbidity and mortality conferences. The veteran public speaker and surgical leader is well aware of the importance of giving formal presentations at a very early stage in one’s career. It has been noted by women mentors that female mentees frequently need coaching in public speaking as they are apt to speak softly and unassertively (personal communication). To be fair, however, women express that it is often difficult to balance assertiveness and “professionally accepted humility” as the male dominated world of surgery tends to refer to women with more negative descriptors regardless of their approach. For example, women surgeons may be either timid or aggressive whereas similar attitudes in a male surgeon are described as “being a gentleman or a go-getter.” An effective mentor (male or female) should help the mentee understand these biases (often subtle, and prevalent in men and women) to confront the potentially demor-alizing sequelae to women surgeons.

Research psychologists have discovered that self-perception is influenced by gender. Women tend to underestimate themselves when engaging in “male-type” activities. When a woman executes a job poorly, she assumes a lack of skill, whereas her male peer assigns failure to “bad luck” [33]. Women surgeons may need more positive feedback and encouragement than their male counterparts [34].

Female and male surgical student self-assessments were compared with faculty evaluations by Lind and colleagues [35]. Male students consistently overestimated themselves, whereas women significantly underrated themselves compared with faculty ratings. This occurred despite higher mean final clerkship grades for women than for men.

Finally, mentors should encourage the mentee to organize short teaching sessions with medical students. This forces the mentee to review the topic, is an excellent introduction to leading interactive teaching sessions and provides the opportunity for female students to be introduced to women role models.

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