Niamh F O'Connor

Having had the opportunity over the past year to develop my passion for surgery and become more involved with Surgical Society, I have worked with the WinS mentorship team, helping to run both the conference speed mentoring and the Women in Surgery mentorship scheme. I have also been running a Student Led widening participation project for INUGSC. My work within Surgical Society has allowed me to gain experience organising conferences, running mentorship schemes and organising events.

My experience in surgical society has also given me the chance to work in areas within surgery I feel passionately about, helping to extend the opportunity to gain surgical guidance and experience to both women and to students from widening participation backgrounds, both of whom are underrepresented across surgical specialities. Whilst studying Global Health, I have been able to explore medicine and surgery from a global, holistic perspective. With this, I hope to be able to offer my skills to the role of Global Surgery chair. I hope to organise more talks from a greater variety of different backgrounds, specifically concerning surgery/global health issues facing the world today such as surgery in conflict zones and resource-poor settings. I would also like to work to organise talks emphasising other issues that affect both surgery and global health, such as gender equity and climate change.