{"id":19396,"date":"2019-07-16T17:48:51","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T22:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=19396"},"modified":"2019-07-16T17:48:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T22:48:54","slug":"awaem-anniversary-interviews-10-years-of-progress-dr-tracy-madsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2019\/07\/16\/awaem-anniversary-interviews-10-years-of-progress-dr-tracy-madsen\/","title":{"rendered":"AWAEM Anniversary Interviews: 10 Years of Progress \u2013 Dr. Tracy Madsen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Today, we feature with Dr. Tracy Madsen<\/a>, the President-Elect of AWAEM in 2019-2020 and an Assistant\nProfessor at Brown. We speak about how she herself as a medical student didn\u2019t\nperceive the need for women-focused professional organizations, and how\nadvancing in her career has demonstrated the critical need for organizations\nlike AWAEM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Dr. Madsen, tell me\nabout where you are currently in your career.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Hi. Thanks for having me.\nThis is really exciting. I’m an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at\nBrown University in Providence. I’ve been there since residency and did my\ntraining and my fellowship there, and I’m now faculty there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Tell me about how you\nspend your time at work?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Sure. I’m really enjoying my\ncurrent kind of balance of roles and responsibilities. I have my clinical work,\nwhich I love. I’m at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island. But then I also do a\nlot of research, which I love, as well. I’m doing mostly sex- and\ngender-focused research. I’m part of the Division of Sex and Gender in the\nDepartment of Emergency Medicine at Brown. My particular research focus is on\nstroke with a little gender disparity work kind of fit in on the side. But most\nof what I’m doing is sex and gender differences in stroke, so we’re looking at\ndifferences in treatment in the emergency department. That’s really where it\nall started, because I work in the emergency department. That was the natural\nbeginning, but now have really expanded to thinking about prevention. How can\nwe take sex-specific approaches to stroke prevention? How can we take\nsex-specific approaches to improving stroke outcomes? It really goes kind of\nthe whole gamut from prevention to outcomes. That’s what I’m working on right\nnow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Great. How was it\nthat you got to where you are right now?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: That’s a huge question. I’m\ntrying to think. There have been so many influences to get me kind of where I\nam. I would say mostly mentorship, and colleagues, and really just following\nthe things that I’m passionate about, which is mostly sex and gender, and\nlooking at things through a gender lens, which includes thinking about women in\nthe workforce and women in academic emergency medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: How did you first\ncultivate that interest?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: It started a long time ago,\nprobably all the way back to college. We don’t have time to go all the way back\nthat far, but I’ve always been very interested in women, and caring for women,\nand how I can help improve the health of women. That really drove me to go into\nmedicine to begin with, but I always thought I think I would end up in a field\nthat was traditionally women’s health, so thinking about OB\/GYN, and thinking\nabout domestic violence, and all of those traditionally women’s health issues,\nbut really just fell in love with emergency medicine. Then from there, figured\nout how I could incorporate my interest in sex and gender in women’s health\nwithin emergency medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: That’s terrific. What\nmotivated your initial involvement with AWAEM?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: I would have to say mentors,\nagain. My mentors have been wonderful and really pulled me into a leadership\nposition, even before I knew that I was ready. I had mentors like Esther Choo,\nand Alyson McGregor, and Basmah Safdar, all of these leaders in AWAEM that kind\nof tagged me and said, “You should do the Didactics Committee for AWAEM.\nThese are great ideas. You’ll get to work with senior people in emergency\nmedicine and network.” That’s how it started. As a fellow, I joined AWAEM,\nand then started as the committee chair for Didactics, and started planning\ndidactics for SAEM, and just had a great time thinking about didactics that\nwould help other women advance in emergency medicine, and then, like I said,\nmeeting people in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Tell me about some of\nthe other projects that AWAEM has gotten you involved in?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Sure. One of the other\ncommittees that I have loved being involved with in AWAEM is the Research\nCommittee. The Research Committee does great work, puts out a ton of papers,\nand really about very interesting and relevant topics. One of the papers that\nwe put out when I was head of the Research Committee was a paper looking at\ngender disparities in salary in academic emergency medicine. That was another\nkind of pivotal point for my career that I think really got me engaged and\nthinking about how we can help women advance in emergency medicine, and that we\ncan put information out there, we can start thinking about solutions and\nstrategies, and that was really all through the AWAEM Research Committee, the\nopportunity to use the data, to write the paper, and to network with colleagues\nwho wanted to think about the same issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Now you’re\nPresident-Elect. Congratulations.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Oh, thank you. I’m excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: What prompted you to\npursue that role?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Again, and this a theme\nthrough my career, is that mentorship with people, senior people, coming and\nsaying, “You’re ready. Let’s do this,” knowing that this is my area\nof interest, and that it fits very well within my career trajectory. I love working\nwith AWAEM in general, but having mentors say, “Tracy, I think you’re\nready. Let’s do this.” That’s really how it happened. Something I’ve been\nthinking about for a few years and looking up to role models and past\npresidents, and thinking, “I would love to do that someday, but when will\nit be kind of my time? When will I be ready to do that,” and really having\nmentors kind of push me in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: That’s great, really\nimportant. Tell me about your vision for your upcoming term.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: Sure. Really excited to\nlearn the ropes and to learn from the incoming president, Dr. Agrawal, about\nthe leadership of the Academy. My vision, really, is move forward from thinking\nabout all of the disparities in medicine, in academic emergency medicine, that\nwomen face, and all the challenges and thinking about how we form solutions,\nbecause we’re seeing study after study that’s showing gender disparities in\nsalary, advancement, ability to choose the tract that you want to go on. It’s\nissue after issue, but really thinking about how we can fix these solutions. I\nthink that we’re ready for that. I think the field is really becoming more and\nmore aware of the disparities and more accepting that these disparities are\nreal and that they can’t be explained away, so now it’s time to fix them. I\nthink that’s my vision for AWAEM, to really be the leading organization in\nemergency medicine that’s strategizing, and finding solutions to these\ndisparities, and encouraging women to go into emergency medicine and know that\nthey’re going to have… or hope that they have… more equality in coming\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Great. Can you\ndescribe any maybe current or future AWAEM initiatives that you think are going\nto support these goals?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: That’s a great question. I\nthink one is collaboration with other academies. Again, really finding\nstrategies to disparities in emergency medicine. Part of that is based on\ngetting other people engaged. We can’t do this alone. We have to have our male\ncolleagues, and our female colleagues, and really everyone on the same page and\nunderstand that these disparities exist, and everyone at the point that we want\nto fix it. I think one of the things is collaborating with other groups and\nother academies and showing people that this really does affect everyone, not\njust AWAEM, and not just women in medicine, and that we need to work together\nto find solutions, whether it’s salary transparency, bringing this to light,\ntalking about this in open forums, coming up with the white papers. Those are\nall things that we’re working on currently, I would say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: Great. How do you\nanticipate the professional needs of women in academic emergency medicine will\nchange in the next 10 years?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: I think we’re going to just\nkeep asking for closer, and closer, and closer to equality. I think for a long\ntime women in medicine and women in a lot of professions have settled for less\nthan equality, and settled for, “Well, I’m a woman. We’re going to have\ndisparities. It is what it is,” and kind of accepting that. But I think,\nas I’m seeing trainees, or as I’m seeing my residents train, and faculty more\njunior to myself, just getting really frustrated with these issues, I think\npeople will not accept it any more. I think the women that are coming up in the\nranks are going to be expecting equal salaries, equal advancement, support for\nmaternity leave, et cetera. They’re really going to expect equality in all\naspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: With that lens, how\ndo you think that leadership roles in women-focused professional organizations\nare considered for the purposes of academic advancement?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: That’s also a great\nquestion. I think, for me, involvement in women-focused organizations, like\nAWAEM, AMWA, other organizations that I’m involved in that have really a gender\nfocus have been critical to my career in providing the support that I need. As\nI mentioned throughout the interview, kind of the mentorship and those senior\nleaders in emergency medicine identifying younger women, saying, “You’re\nready. You’re ready for this leadership position,” and really putting you\ninto roles that maybe you wouldn’t put yourself into. Naturally, those\nleadership roles, papers, publications, that people kind of nominate you to do,\nall go toward promotion, and go toward career advancement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M Lin: I’m going to\ntransition a little bit more to questions about your career in a broader sense.\nHow do you feel like gender has affected your own career development? I know it\nhas always been an interest of yours, but has it impacted your career growth in\nany way?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T Madsen: That’s a great question. I’m\nnot sure. I mean, I think when you look at your own career and kind of reflect,\nthe natural thing is to think like, “Oh, I haven’t experienced any issues\nor any disparities.” But I think being a woman in emergency medicine, like\nall of my colleagues… or many of my colleagues… I know have experienced\nbeing called something other than, doctor, whether it’s nurse, or not being\ncalled, doctor, being called by their first name, where your male colleagues\nare being called Dr. So-and-so without any thought can be frustrating and\ndifficult when you’ve worked so many years to get to where you are. But I think\nbeing part of organizations like AWAEM and the other organizations that I’m in,\nspeaking with mentors and colleagues about this really just turns those\nfrustrations into inspiration, and really makes you want to do something about\nthese issues, and talk about it, and write about it, and change things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n