SECTION REPORT WOMEN IN EMERGENCY MEDICINE
WiEM Awards Loice Swisher, MD MAAEM FAAEM
T
he History:
Carrying my backpack on the plane to St. Louis, I could barely contain my excitement. I was transporting three awards, the new Women in Emergency Section awards, fully expecting a transformative moment at the Scientific Assembly WiEM Luncheon. Everything came together quickly and the stars aligned to make this possible. Only a handful of people were “in the know.” This journey started three and a half years ago in New York City. Sitting in the audience for the inaugural FIX conference, stunning graphs flashed across the screen showing appalling gender differences in SAEM award recipients. Apparently, this difference of men winning most of the national awards is common across medicine. I feared it would be true for AAEM too…and it was. The FIX speakers had a fix for this: 1. Encourage women to self-nominate and nominate others for awards (which women traditionally do not do and you can’t win unless you are nominated). 2. Create section specific awards more geared towards the professional interests of women. The WiEM Committee immediately instituted an awards nominating task force in 2018 with the expressed purpose of identifying qualified women and nominating these women for AAEM awards. This approach has been successful.
Finding the glass jewel awards, a lightbulb went on. These would be the GEMs: the Gender in Emergency Medicine Awards. It was perfect. Our winners were all treasures who sparkled with a brilliance from within, each unique with a common bond.
The Emerald Young Leader Award This award recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to AAEM in leadership. Nominees for this award must have 10 or fewer years’ experience in an EM leadership position and must be AAEM Women in Emergency Medicine Section members. Awardee: Molly Estes, MD FAAEM FACEP Dr. Molly Estes is a Stanford EM residency graduate where she also completed a medical education fellowship. Since 2017 she has been clinical faculty and EM clerkship director at Loma Linda since 2019. She has been a long-time member of AAEM having been involved with RSA and YPS. In 2017, Dr. Estes was a co-winner of the Open Mic competition and a Scientific Assembly speaker ever since. She is a member of the AAEM Education Committee and SA Subcommittee, chair of the Learning Management System Committee learning and the WiEM Education Working Group lead. She continues to develop our Women’s Wisdom podcast. >>
Last year when Women in EM went from committee to section, I charged the leadership working group to attend to AAEM awards issues. Drs. Krafin Schreyer and Kristyn Smith submitted three new awards to the WiEM Council in May. In reflecting on the AAEM awards, all the named awards were for men, primarily white men. These men have been significant to creating our organization, however we wanted to recognize the importance of women to our specialty as well. With AAEM, there was no doubt that this award should be named after Dr. Joanne Williams, a founding member of AAEM and the first woman Master of AAEM. She continues to be active in the WiEM Section, the DEI Committee and the CAL/AAEM Chapter Division.
The GEMs: Now that we had award descriptions, we actually needed awards. We wanted these to be special to reflect the uniqueness of our section members. Someone asked if we were going to call these awards something like the Oscars or the Emmys. We were charged with the responsibility of creating a brand, a legacy.
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COMMON SENSE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021
“THESE WOULD BE THE GEMS: THE GENDER IN EMERGENCY MEDICINE AWARDS. IT WAS PERFECT.”
