AWAEM Awareness November - December 2012

November-December, 2012

AWAEMAWARENESS

A bimonthly update to inform you of the current activities of our Academy in an effort to make this organization a strong advocate for women in academic emergency medicine.

Table of Contents In My Opinion: Words of Wisdom On This Special Time of Year

Featured Women in Academic Emergency Medicine

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Award Announcement - Time to Nominate...Deadline January 31, 2013!

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Annual Meeting Didactic Summary - Unconscious Bias

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Available Committees 2012-2013

ANNOUNCEMENTS Mentor Network is available! (see page 5 for details) AWAEM.pbworks.com We have an online workspace at PBWorks!

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Take a look today!

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AWAEM AWARENESS November-December, 2012

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On behalf of the AWEM leadership, the execu9ve commi<ee and all of the commi<ee chairs and commi<ee members, I would like to send each of you season’s gree9ngs.

May the season bring you joy and the new year fulfill your wishes.

-­‐ Gloria Kuhn, President, AWAEM http://t.cdc.gov/ecards/message.aspx?cardid=418

In My Opinion - from your AWAEM President Words of Wisdom On This Special Time of Year

By Gloria Kuhn, DO

The year begins in January with a seemingly infinite amount of time to make and keep the resolutions made, fulfill the promises given, and achieve the goals chosen.

Then we blink and Thanksgiving has arrived, another blink and we are being warned there are only X number of days until Christmas. Where did the time go? Look at what we did not accomplish, how disappointing!! And the things we need to get done before we run out of those X number of days!!!

But there is another way to look at this time of year.

No matter our religion, the holiday we celebrate, the color of our skin, or where we were born, this is a time to look inward to the family and friends we love, the things we have accomplished during our lives, and the blessings we have received and have worked hard to earn. This is the time to take a moment to hug someone, to say “I love you and am glad you are part of my life”, to snuggle with a child and read a story. No one who loves you cares whether the gift is wrapped perfectly. The kids will remember that you took the time and had the patience to help them decorate a tree and then all of you stood back and admired the creation. Lighting the menorah with your children, and smiling at the beauty of the candles you just lit, becomes a treasured memory. Celebrating Kwanza and telling the stories surrounding the celebration is a way to become closer and remember the heritage given to you and your children. Having a dinner with family or friends is a way that each of us can connect or reconnect. Whether cooking the food we learned to make from parents or grandparents or “ordering in” your favorite meal, the time becomes special. Calls home to family, whether in the US, the Middle East, Europe, or Asia, bring us together.

It is also time to celebrate ourselves and to be thankful. Each of us is truly fortunate for the intelligence we have inherited, and the drive and motivation that has allowed us to become physicians with the knowledge needed to save a life, comfort a patient, and console a family. We have choices that many others don’t have. We earn enough income so we can choose where to spend our money; not all goes to food, shelter, and clothing with little or none left over, or perhaps not even enough to purchase the essentials of life.

If you are working on the day or night of a holiday you will see patients coming in because they have no place to go, no one with whom to celebrate. Many have come for warmth or more importantly someone to whom they can talk and someone who will take the time to listen. Be that someone, take that moment, bestow the gift that you can give to fill that need.

But when that shift is over and you go home to those who love you and those you love, do for each of them what you have done for your patients. Be the someone who will take that moment to listen, to bestow that gift of time that is just for them. Think about how good you feel and how happy you have made the person you love.

When January rolls around and you have a seeming infinity of time to make and keep the resolutions, fulfill the promises given, and achieve the goals, remember the moments for patients, family, and friends and bestow them frequently for your sake and theirs.

In that spirit, I wish all of you joy at this season and for the coming year and say as Tiny Tim said, “God bless us everyone.”

AWAEM AWARENESS November-December, 2012

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Featured Women in Academic EM: Commitment to Service & Research

By Priya Kuppusamy, MD

Breena Taira, MD Faculty, UCLA

Deborah Diercks, MD Professor, UC-Davis

Breena Taira is featured in our newsletter this month for her commitment to service.Two years into a surgical residency at Stony Brook University, Breena was accepted into the highly competitive Empire Clinical Research Investigators’ Program where she completed a two-year research fellowship in Burn and Wound Healing and simultaneously received a Masters in Public Health degree. Around this time, Breena reconsidered her career path and joined Stony Brook’s Emergency Medicine training program. She was quickly recognized as a model resident, with excellent clinical acumen and compassion towards her patients, peers and staff. As a result, she was appointed Chief Resident in 2011.

Breena exemplifies leadership and service. She used her interest in statistical analysis to revamp Stony Brook’s journal club and served as a preceptor in countless sessions. She served a oneyear term on the Graduate Medical Education Committee and is a member of the World Health Organization’s committee on the Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care. She played a key role in the acquisition of two EMRA Local Action Grants which involved the need for basic first aid in “She took a kernel of rural Nicaragua and an idea and expanded improving the medical it to multiple response to intimate prospective and partner violence. While retrospective pediatric still a junior resident, she trauma projects.” implemented the Stony Thomas Lee, MD Brook University Medical Stony Brook University Director, Pediatric Surgery Center Pediatric Trauma Research Group which bridged the collaborative effort between emergency medicine, pediatric surgery, trauma surgery and the pediatric intensive care unit.

Her academic portfolio speaks for itself. She is first-author and co-author of 33 publications and lead author of 34 abstract submissions and two book chapters. Breena was selected as a semifinalist in the 2011 CORD National CPC competition and invited speaker at conferences in New York and Japan. In 2011, she was appointed as a Resident Fellow to the Editorial Board of Annals of Emergency Medicine. It comes as no surprise that in 2011, she received Stony Brook University’s Distinguished Recent Graduate Award.

Deborah Diercks is featured this month for her commitment to research in women’s cardiovascular health. She is currently the Director of Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of California Davis School of Medicine. Deborah attended medical school at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts and completed her Emergency Medicine residency training at University of Cincinnati.

Deborah’s interest in women’s health is evident by her numerous research publications. Most notably, using data from American Heart Association (AHA) and American College of Research is formalized Cardiology registries, she curiosity. studied the impact of It is poking and prying education in early with a purpose. cardiovascular symptom recognition and timely - Zora Neale Hurston access to care in women with chest pain. She is an Associate Editor for the Annals of Emergency Medicine and serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Emergency Medicine. In addition, she is a member of AHA’s Western States STEMI Task Force.

As a result of her contributions to academic emergency medicine as both an educator and researcher, Deborah received the Academic Excellence Award in 2002 and the Academic Educator Award in 2003 and 2005.

AWAEM AWARENESS November-December, 2012

AWAEM Awards: Accepting Nominations!

Deadline: January 31, 2013, 5 pm EST *** Submit all materials electronically to Kinjal Sethuraman, at kinjal.sethuraman@gmail.com ***

Research Award

Early Career Faculty Award

AWAEM Resident Award

Description: The Research Award recognizes a faculty member whose outstanding efforts and achievements have promoted the research in women’s health in Emergency Medicine. Efforts to be recognized are: advancement of women’s health and women’s issues through research.

The accomplishments of the winner of this award should have had significant impact on advancing knowledge about women’s health issues as they relate to emergency medicine.

Description: To honor early career female faculty who have shown promise for significant career achievements in Emergency Medicine, whether through research, education, advocacy, or administration, and/or who have worked to promote the role of women in academic emergency medicine.

Description: To honor a female resident who has shown promise for significant career achievements in Emergency Medicine, whether through research, education, advocacy, or administration, and/or who have worked to promote the role of women in academic emergency medicine.

Eligibility criteria: 1) Female Emergency Medicine physician 2) Faculty in a U.S. academic Emergency Medicine department 3) Current SAEM Membership Selection criteria: Nominees should have: 1) Demonstrated dedication to the EM research and women’s health.

2) Multiple publications and lectures on women’s health issues.

Required Documentation: 1) Nominee’s CV 2) One nomination letter explaining why the candidate merits the award.

Nomination letter may be submitted by former or current colleagues, mentees, or employers. Selfnominations are welcome and encouraged.

3) Letter of recommendation from department chair or research director. If nominator is the chair or research director one letter addressing #2 & 3 may suffice.

4) One letter from current or former mentee.

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Eligibility: 1) Female EM physician.

2) Faculty member in a U.S. academic EM department.

3) No more than ten years of cumulative employment in an academic emergency department.

Example: Dr. X finished residency in 1995. She then worked in an academic center for 2 years. After that, she worked in a community hospital, part-time for several years.

She then decided to return the academics in 2004 and has worked continuously from 2004 – 2012 , in her department; therefore, Dr. X qualifies for the award.

Selection criteria: 1) Evidence of achievements, innovation, and dedication in academic Emergency Medicine, whether through education, research, advocacy, or administration.

2) Involvement on a national level (e.g., through SAEM committees, research consortiums, or advocacy groups) 3) Activities demonstrating commitment to advancing the role of women in academic EM Required Documentation: 1) Nominee’s CV 2) One nomination letter.

Nomination letter may be submitted by former or current colleagues, mentors, mentees, or employers. Selfnominations are welcome and encouraged.

3) One letter of support from chair or mentor. If nominator is the chair, one letter addressing #2 & 3 may suffice.

4) One additional letter from mentee, resident, or other faculty.

Eligibility: 1) Female EM resident in accredited ACGME program in good standing Selection criteria: 1) Evidence of achievements, innovation, and dedication in academic Emergency Medicine, whether through education, research, advocacy, or administration.

Required Documents: 1) Nominee’s CV 2) One nomination letter.

Nomination letter may be submitted by former or current colleagues, mentors, mentees, or employers. Selfnominations are welcome and encouraged.

3) One letter of support from residency director. If nominator is the residency director one letter addressing #2 & 3 may suffice.

4) Two letters of support from other residents.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

- Maya Angelou

AWAEM AWARENESS November-December, 2012

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Annual Meeting Didactic Summary Unconscious Bias

By Jeannette Wolfe, MD

“The real reasons that women are not moving up do not lie primarily with women.

They are embedded in systems that have evolved over decades and reflect the values, motivations and views of a male majority.

None of this is done intentionally or even consciously. It is simply the result of history and corporate evolutions. But so long as these issues remain unseen, they form an intractable barrier to a more inclusive work environment.”

Whittenberg-Cox Women Mean Business.

I was fortunate to represent AWAEM during the past SAEM national meeting and to run a lecture/panel discussion on the impact of unconscious bias in professional development. Here is a brief synopsis of the highlights of my talk.

Unconscious bias (UB) is a deeply rooted subliminal belief that reinforces the norms of dominant societal beliefs.

Most of us have UB about gender expectations (along with age, weight, race and a gazillion other things) and ironically these biases may be in direct opposition to our consciously held values. We may consciously support that both Bobby and Suzy can be stay-at-home parents but may still have a slightly different “gut” reaction when we see Bobby at the toddler music hour instead of Suzy. Think about UBs as our brain’s “default” setting for certain topics. These settings are easy enough to override, especially if we pay extra attention or follow explicit instructions, but they quickly become our fall back settings when we get rushed or distracted. In the world of leadership, our UB is literally that men, particularly white men, rule. UB is ubiquitous, and affects both men and women: Carol is just as likely as Joe to believe, given similar credentials, that Mark is more qualified than Mary for senior advancement. (To test your own UB objectively go to Harvard’s Implicit Test https:// implicit.harvard.edu).

Here is a sampling of the literature on UB associated with gender and leadership: “Karen” and “Brian” have identical CVs for a psychology position, but Brian is viewed as more qualified and more hirable (Steinpris Sexroles 1999). “John” and “Jenifer” are applying for a mock lab assistant position and while Jenifer is viewed as more “likeable” John is seen as more competent and offered a higher salary. (Moss-Racusin PNAS 2012). When NYU students were asked to rate the achievements and characteristics of a successful venture capitalist named either “Heidi” or “Howard”, only “Heidi” was labeled as being manipulative and unlikeable (Flynn/Anderson NYU). And when interviewee behavior is standardized, male evaluators are more critical of women who try to negotiate (Bowles, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 2007). For a good bibliography on this topic go to the following American Association of Medical College’s website. https://www.aamc.org/download/52208/data/ bibliography.pdf.pdf.

So how do we move past this? For the national talk, I came up with a “RISE” mnemonic. “R” is for “recognize”, the first step is to acknowledge that this is a real phenomena and that UB can impact every step of employment and advancement. Again, UB is not done “intentionally”. In most situations it is often quite subtle, with neither party appreciating that they have potentially discriminated or been discriminated against. In addition, UB is very difficult to tease out from potential legitimate confounding variables in individual cases so it is important to track broader data over longer time periods to appreciate its subtle effect. The capturing of this data is key to the identification of potentially correctable problems related to hiring, salary, attrition, and gender of committee members.

“I” stands for “initiating” a conversation with senior management and sharing collected data. Organizational change will only occur if senior management understands the relevance of UB to your organization (read: lost talent and money) and then authentically buys-in to a cultural change. Ideally this will lead to the development of a multifaceted gender balance initiative. Although talented women should play prominent roles in this initiative, it may be best led by a popular male “influencer” as a good portion of their job will be to help change the mindsets of men. Of note, gender balance goes both ways, in that there are often departments within organizations that are predominately women (like HR or nursing)which may benefit from the synergistic input of men. The goal should be at least 30% representation of the opposite gender (McKinsey and Co). If you have only 1 or 2 women on a committee, the women are often are viewed as “tokens” and their input is scrutinized (aligned with or in opposition to traditional gender prescriptions like submissiveness and collaboration) differently than that of other committee members. When more women, or men, join a committee, the participants’ gender becomes less marginalized and their comments can be evaluated more by their objective content.

Continued on page 5.

http://www.humanfacets.com/category/unconscious-bias/

AWAEM AWARENESS November-December, 2012

Annual Meeting Didactic Summary Unconscious Bias

By Jeannette Wolfe, MD

Continued from page 4.

“S” is for standardize. UB creeps up most in situations that lack objective direction. For example, Stephanie Abbuhl (J Gen Intern Medicine 2009, and our last AWAEM president) compared gender departmental ratios with the departmental ratios of men and women who won awards at Penn. She found that when award criteria were explicit, like most publications, that award and departmental ratios were appropriately congruent. But when award criteria were more implicit and subjective, like “Best Clinician”, men received a disproportionate number of awards. Organizations can decrease UB by standardizing evaluations, promotion, bonuses, etc. They can also look to best practices in the literature like MIT’s gender initiative in which MIT developed a comprehensive program that identified and addressed specific professional roadblocks that their female faculty had encountered.

“E” means “evaluate”. There are no quick fixes; a viable gender balance initiative requires a long-term commitment. Changing the authentic mindset of an organization takes time to track what worked and to identify continued opportunities for improvement in areas such as: scheduling, professional development, skill acquisition, mentor/ sponsorship and ultimately accountability.

In many organizations women start to “stall” in their professional advancement around 10 years into the workforce. At first glance it is easy to write this off as work/ life balance choices as this is the time frame that many women are beginning to start their families and have consciously altered their career trajectories. But upon closer inspection, it is also the time when women are beginning to hit middle management. Now, UB is becoming subtly more prevalent as continued advancement starts to buck societal stereotypes and many women- even those who have worked full time and have no children.

For the last several decades a “fix-the-woman” mentality has dominated the discussion surrounding solutions to creating gender balance in senior management. But for women to reach their true professional potential and for organizations to capitalize on the financial and innovative advantages of their inclusion, it is time we include men to the discussion and begin to “fix-thesystem.”

I am very passionate on this topic and enjoyed sharing this information with our colleagues at SAEM.

Mentor Network Available!!

By Angela Fisher, MD & Laura Medford-Davis, MD

http://www.nesta.org.uk/areas_of_work/ creative_economy/ creative_business_mentor_network

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Good news: the AWAEM Regional Mentoring Network is now ready to use!

We have 30 mentors from around the country who have generously volunteered their time to help you succeed. On PBWorks you will find a list of the mentors, their university affiliations, their email contacts, and their research/specialty areas. Please take full advantage of the expertise these faculty have so kindly offered to share by

Key points from Annual Luncheon Table Discussion on Unconscious Bias Facilitators: Stephanie Abbuhl, MD & Jeanette Wolfe, MD •Research has shown that women and men are equally responsible for unconscious bias. Women can be more biased against other women than men.

•Our internal negative voice can lead to our own unconscious bias against ourselves- “I’m not good enough.”

•Unconscious bias need to be identified when it occurs- either by the target of bias or a compatriot at a meeting. “X has something to say, I’d really like to hear it.”

•Expectations of how men and women communicate are different.

•It’s important to recruit like-minded men to move your agenda forward.

•“Pick whether you want to be loved or respected, few women can be both.” (Kinjal editorial- that’s probably true for men too- but easier for them to be both.)

If you are interested in having topics on professional development like UB or negotiation discussed at your institutions contact jeannettewolfe@yahoo.com

reaching out to anyone with a common interest, whether your question is about job hunting, a scholarly project, or worklife balance. Your enthusiasm and active participation will make this network a success!

Contact me with any ideas you might have for how the network can better benefit you as a resident. laura medford.davis@gmail.com “If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.”

-Robert Kiyosaki

AWAEM AWARENESS November-December 2012

Available Committees for 2012-2013 Time to get involved!

If you are interested in helping with any of these committees, as a member or possibly leadership role, please e-mail the Chair so you can be included. If you do not hear from the Chair within a week (or no Chair is listed) please contact Gloria Kuhn, DO (gkuhn@med.wayne.edu) as sometimes messages do get lost in the cyberspace of e-mail land.

We need people like you to keep AWAEM a success!!

AWAEM Guidelines & Policies Chair: Esther Choo echomd@gmail.com Co-Chair: Sue Watts Awards Chair: Kinjal Sethuraman kinjal.sethuraman@gmail.com Co-Chair: Priya Kuppusamy Mentor: Michelle Biros E-Communications Chair: Stacey Poznanski stacey.poznanski@gmail.com Co-Chair: Leila Getto Mentor: Gloria Kuhn

Research Chair: Marna Greenberg: mrgdo@ptd.net Co-Chairs: Esther Choo, Julie Welch, Basmah Safdar SAEM Meeting Initiatives Chair: Alyson McGregor amcgregormd@gmail.com Co-Chairs: Esther Choo, Preeti Jois, Basmah Safdar, Julie Welch, Jeannette Wolfe, Tracy Madsen

Medical School Initiatives Chair: Keme Carter kcarter@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu Membership Chair: Neha Raukar nraukar@gmail.com Co-Chair: Tracy Sanson

Regional Mentoring Chair: Angela Fisher Past Chair & Mentor: Linda Druelinger ldruelin@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu Past Mentor: Kerry Broderick

Wellness Chair: Dara Kass darakass@gmail.com Resident Initiatives Taskforce: Co-Chairs: Michelle Lall & Ciera Barclay-Buchanan Leana Wen (Resident RSA), Suzanne Bryce (Resident RSA) Global Emergency Medicine Taskforce Chair: Bhakti Hansoti

“I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.”

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Mae West

Many Photos found via Google Images. For a list of Photo Credits, please contact Stacey Poznanski, DO at stacey.poznanski@gmail.com