Using Existing Citizenship Duties to Create Career Acceleration for Each Other
Author: Eileen Barrett, MD, MPH, SFHM, MACP
Keywords: gender equity, gender tax, professional development, mentorship, sponsorship
Employment-related citizenship tasks in medicine are widespread, necessary for operations, and often unfunded and undervalued. They are also often disproportionately performed by women, and can contribute to a gender tax, as well as a version of the majority subsidy. Until we can transform our institutions to value, compensate, and promote for this essential work, some of it may be made more manageable by using it to promote others.
In my previous position, I was co-chair of our department’s grand rounds planning committee and wrote about how this was used to advance other people’s careers while improving peer education. On a smaller scale, I used a similar experience as director of my division’s monthly research presentation meeting to promote the great work of people often overlooked for speaking opportunities. Although coordinating this meeting fell under some of my compensated time in quality improvement and that is not the case for most in academia, it is still something many of us can do if we think creatively about our duties. In my case, this position hadn’t been used to provide speaking and presentation opportunities particularly for women, early career faculty, and learners.
Over a two year period, our once monthly hour-long research conference was transformed to highlight presenters who were women, students, residents, early career, and doing research projects in health equity. To maximize speaking opportunities and to reduce the work of developing a presentation, 2-3 presenters were invited per one hour session. Speakers were also provided draft slides that provided structure for presenting research (for those with little presentation experience), and offered to have their slides reviewed ahead of time. In their speaker introductions, their expertise and achievements were highlighted and - particularly for students and residents - also what an honor it was for faculty to learn from them. Afterward, presenters were provided a signed letter thanking them and highlighting their presentation - as well as encouragement to share that letter in their faculty advisor (if still in training) or promotion dossier (if faculty).
How did it go? I don’t know if the work was sustained after wrapping up my position, but it was so personally rewarding to receive feedback how meaningful it was by presenters to have these opportunities available. We had 51 different scheduled presenters overall instead of the usual 24. Of those, 35 presenters were women (and some presented several times), 10 were assistant professors, and 21 were students, residents, or fellows. The students in particular said it was their first speaking opportunity in front of faculty and what a confidence-building experience doing so was, and both residents and students said they would add it to their CVs when applying for their next steps.
This small redesign provided career acceleration for earlier career colleagues who are often overlooked for speaking opportunities, and I treasured seeing new presenters excel. Most valuable, though, was to see how this group of talented, dedicated, and diverse presenters shared their innovative and unique research projects so often on topics incompletely covered in local research presentations such as on gender and health equity, so that all of us could learn from them. I hope that their work is soon as funded and valued as it could be in employment and leadership position selection and promotion decisions. And until then, I hope that where you work that someone replicates this small initiative and does it better, and look forward to hearing how that goes.
About the author: Eileen Barrett, MD, MPH, SFHM, MACP, is an internist in Albuquerque. (Twitter: @EileenBarrettNM)
