About six years ago, the Dean of the\nUniversity of Utah School of Medicine had an idea. She wanted more women in the\nSchool of Medicine to consider their futures as leaders. To become not only physicians,\nscientists and advocates, but to become leaders of their communities as future\nprogram directors, department heads, chief medical officers and deans. The\ngroup started as a team of six medical students who were passionate about women\nin leadership. Now, we have been able to reach not only female medical\nstudents, but both male and female residents, faculty, and staff and have\nhopefully made a difference in the lives of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At our core we are women with\npassion for medicine, education, research, advocacy, and policy. We are also women who believe in striving for\nour individual success, while simultaneously creating and holding space for our\npeers to be successful. We are WE WILL: Women Expanding Women in Leadership, a group\nof women striving to empower the female physicians of today and tomorrow<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking back, it wasn\u2019t very hard to make our small group into a large force, but we though it appropriate to share how to create such a forceful group at any medical school . . . or any organization for that matter.\u00a0 First, start with the passion.\u00a0 Our group was founded on these ideals \u2013 Leadership, Excellence, and Professionalism, and although we didn\u2019t even make a name until three years in, we all shared this focus.\u00a0 From a humble handful of female medical students and a female dean, in the past few years, the group has expanded to include several representatives from each medical class, as well as a faculty mentor and a male mentor who is a director of education strategy.\u00a0 Our conversations were powerful, but we needed to reach more people.\u00a0 We have expanded our small group discussions to create programming for the entire student body in the School of Medicine, empowering everyone, but especially women, to realize their professional goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After passion, we needed to have impact.\u00a0 Last year we held our first large scale event: a half-day workshop where women from all levels of training came together to network and learn from one another. The event opened with a panel featuring four exceptional female physicians from different disciplines, including our faculty mentor from EM, our Dean of curriculum from Med-Peds, a senior researcher from oncology, and the female chair of Medicine.\u00a0 All women.\u00a0 All leaders.\u00a0 All inspiring humans from different departments who hold important positions of leadership within the School of Medicine and the hospital. They set the tone for the rest of the morning by sharing their personal journeys in medicine, from being first year medical students to residency to how they got to their current positions. They celebrated successes, but they were also candid about their challenges. While they came from different backgrounds and had different stories, they shared a passion for their work and evident enthusiasm to help guide trainees down their own career paths. Following the panel, we had small break-out sessions which covered such themes as self-advocacy, work-life balance, mentorship, and navigating a career in medicine. These sessions were designed to be very personal. We organized each session in advance to include approximately one physician for every two students, allowing these smaller groups to dive deeper than the session theme. Residents and Chief Residents were included in these groups.\u00a0 No topic was off limits. We talked about how to succeed in medical school while engaging in opportunities for professional development. We talked about how to become a leader in medical school by reaching out to both mentors and fellow students to start interest groups, research projects, and to engage in community service. We talked about prioritizing personal wellness.\u00a0 We helped students connect with attendings and residents as mentors, or to shadow. We came together as human beings who shared a common goal \u2013 to be the best physician.\u00a0 It was a great reminder of how passionate and driven female physicians and medical students are, and we owe the success of our event to all of the students, attendings, and residents who attended. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next, after making a big impact, we have been able to expand the connection and mentorship through smaller, more intimate events, saving a large annual spring event as a cornerstone to our mission.\u00a0 As a team, the women of WE WILL are working to become leaders in our medical community. We are developing programming specifically geared to each class of medical students, with events for first- and second-year students focused on subjects like finding mentors and understanding gender disparities in medicine, and events for third- and fourth-year students to pursue positions of leadership in residency and their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We hosted a lunch time mixer targeted at MS1-2\u2019s career\nexploration, which included theme tables in which respected female residents\nand attendings could just talk about their career paths, pearls and\npitfalls. We are hosting an evening\ncocktail event for MS3-4\u2019s that discusses the \u201cBirds Eye View\u201d of what it is\n\u201creally like\u201d to be out there as a female academic faculty member. We learned that you can never please\neveryone, but simple things like calendar reminders for faculty, and a cheat\nsheet for students that include common questions to ask and a list of available\nmentors and their email contacts can go a long way to making an event\nmemorable. We are now planning our next large-scale\nworkshop, hoping to improve upon our event last year to foster even deeper\ndiscussions and create a better experience for our attendees. Ultimately, we aspire for our workshops to be\nable to help female medical students cultivate resilience, confidence, and\nstrength. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are in a new era of Medicine; one where the majority of healthcare providers are women; strong, capable, intelligent, thoughtful, empathetic women who strive to deliver the best care possible to their patients and who work hard to empower the next generation of female medical leaders. Our hope is that WE WILL will play a small role in this. With passion, impact, and then deep connection, we feel that anything is possible in mentoring women leaders.\u00a0 We are really excited for the future of WE WILL and the future of similar programs across the country. We are even more excited for the future of Medicine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This piece was written by Roselyn Neville, Shreya Sreekantaswamy, Guinn Dunn, Megan Fix MD on behalf of the WE WILL Leadership Group and the University of Utah<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About six years ago, the Dean of the University of Utah School of Medicine had an idea. She wanted more women in the School of Medicine to consider their futures as leaders. To become not only physicians, scientists and advocates,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":810,"featured_media":7658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Learn tips from WE WILL on developing successful women's leadership networks! @DrMeganFix\n@UofUMedicine","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[29],"coauthors":[909,910,911,912],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n