Surgical Society: Women in Surgery Chair

My dream to become a surgeon started at the age of 13, where I was captured by the concept of exploring human health and the potential to manually heal illnesses. At that age, I did not think of the challenges ahead. Now at 19, upon sharing my goal with male doctors, I keep hearing: “That’s difficult as a woman. Are you sure?”

And I’ve always responded: Yes, I am.

Therefore, Women in Surgery means two things for me: driving change and uniting for success. It is our responsibility to breach the norms of yesterday and pave the way for future generations to open the surgical field for equally passionate and skilled people.

I would love the opportunity to lead this force and show that it should not be just women for women, but everybody for everybody, to ensure the best patient outcomes.  

My involvement in last year‘s conference showed me the medical body’s passion and drive for exploring surgery. Particularly the opportunity to listen to expert surgeons has the power to inspire more individuals to pursue this specialty. As Chair, I seek to strengthen and expand the society’s pathways to support and inspire women at all stages of their medical careers via mentorship, conferences, and other networking-building initiatives.

My leadership will be guided by a commitment to inclusivity, collaboration, and empowerment, ensuring that the voices and concerns of women in surgery are heard, valued, and acted upon and that everybody who is keen to pursue surgery will be able to do so.

Since first year, the WINS conference has been a memorable experience. Experiencing such a varied program, cultivated around increasing female representation in surgery, I left encouraged and optimistic.

As a program coordinator this year, I have loved working as part of the team behind the scenes, seeing ideas pitched in our initial meetings come to fruition. Whilst chair will be a step up, I believe that this role has best prepared me to take it on. I have seen the work that goes into running the WINS conference and events and the problems that a chair can encounter. I have had to efficiently deal with several issues, from logistics with biological tissue to missing equipment to technology malfunctioning during workshops.  

As chair, I would create an online WINS forum, where surgeons whom we have previously contacted or collaborated with can directly communicate with the committee about available research and shadowing opportunities. This could enable us to provide students with year-long access to surgeons and contribute towards our goal of increasing accessibility.

I would also like to introduce longer-term mentorships and more frequent talks in collaboration with other surgical societies, having greatly enjoyed organising a collaboration with Cardiothoracics society this year. 

Overall, I would relish the opportunity to give back to the committee which has been such a great source of enjoyment for me since the start of medical school.

Sharing a passion for surgery we have both felt intimidated by the challenges of pursuing a male-dominated career. Attending our first Women in Surgery Conference was a pivotal experience that really encouraged us to pursue this field, and has been reinforced further during our time on the subcommittee this year.

As part of the mentoring and programme teams we have worked closely with the current Chair to help organise the National WinS Conference, an inter-university conference, and our National Surgeon-Student Mentorship Scheme. From this we have gained an in-depth understanding of the society structure and an appreciation of the innovation, resilience and planning required to undertake the responsibilities of the role.

Building on the success of ‘WinS Accelerate’, we aim to implement our ‘WinS Empower’ scheme to hold regular networking socials, seminars and surgical simulation workshops. Through the range of events, we hope to work with peers within UCL and the wider WinS network to increase opportunities for students to engage with the community whilst exploring various aspects of the diverse field.

We believe that as chairs, we can use the valuable experiences and skills we’ve learned on committee as a foundation to continue the achievements of WinS for the coming year. It would be an honour to use this position to create a space to bridge the gap between students and women in surgery, reassuring those interested in the career that it is well within their capabilities.