Women in Ortho?

[OrthoDreamer]

I am in my 2nd year of medical school and am seriously considering orthopedics as a career. I am getting very mixed opinions from people about being a woman in ortho who wants to have a family because of the amount of time ortho demands. I have even heard that while a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to do surgery. However, very little of my info is coming from orthopedic surgeons, and none from female ortho surgeons. Does any one out there have some advice and/or information about this. Any woman out there that did/are doing ortho and have a family? Would you do it again?

Thanks for all your help!

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[HtSht2BoneDoc]

. I have even heard that while a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to do surgery. However, very little of my info is coming from orthopedic surgeons, and none from female ortho surgeons. Does any one out there have some advice and/or information about this. Any woman out there that did/are doing ortho and have a family? Would you do it again?

This is probably becausethey use so much fluoro in the or. A lot of female orthos with kids tend to drop out because it is so time demanding. But there are alot of women i met that are married without kids that love it.

 

[DOctorJay]

I know a female orthopod who adopted a child and her husband is a stay at home dad.

-J

 

[LuckyMD2b]

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[amyliz]

I am in my 2nd year of medical school and am seriously considering orthopedics as a career. I am getting very mixed opinions from people about being a woman in ortho who wants to have a family because of the amount of time ortho demands. I have even heard that while a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to do surgery. However, very little of my info is coming from orthopedic surgeons, and none from female ortho surgeons. Does any one out there have some advice and/or information about this. Any woman out there that did/are doing ortho and have a family? Would you do it again?

Thanks for all your help!

My personal opinion on women in medicine in general is that you're always going to have to compromise something: either the amount of time you spend with your kids (assuming you have any) or the field you go into. It's up to you to decide which is more important to you. (Of course, this is easy for me to say, being young, naive and child-free).

Also on the topic of women in ortho, I've been hanging out during office hours with my clinical mentor (a spine guy), and I've definitely noticed that I'm the only woman around with the white coat. Since I'm more of a guy's girl it doesn't bother me, but I can see how the environment might be intimidating to someone who's more comfortable in the estrogen-fest of the peds outpatient office.

 

[asdf123]

Orthopaedic residency is demanding and it's usually during the time in women's lives when they want to have children (mid 20's to early 30's)...if you can delay having kids until after your residency it would make your life much easier...Now there are other specialties with demanding residencies like general surgery, neurosurgery that pose the same problems for women who want to have families. Orthopaedic residencies FROWN UPON maternity leave and pregnant residents. If you decide to get pregnant during your residency, expect a backlash and quite a bit of hostility from your fellow residents and attendings. Residency is tough enough as it is...I for one do not want to pick up someone else's slack because they're pregnant or on maternity leave. Orthopaedics is not like other specialties where pregnant residents are acceptable. So keep this in mind.

There are few women in orthopaedics...in recent years more women have entered the field but they are still in the minority. The ugly truth is that you will face discrimination at various stages of your career because of your gender. Whether or not you can put up with this depends on your personality. In my opinion, you REALLY have to love orthopedics to go into it as a woman because the obstacles in your path are much greater than they are for a male.

There are certain procedures in orthopaedics that do require physical strength and during your residency you may encounter some difficulties with this depending on the program you go to...but this is usually not an issue when you are out in practice because you choose your own cases. We have a female in our program who is physically fit and most of the time this is not a problem for her.

In the end, if you are committed to orthopaedics you should do it. It's a lot of fun.

 

[monique]

OrthoDreamer,

While on the interview trail, I met two female residents with children. One had her child during the fourth year of medical school and a husband that worked from home; the other had her child during a research year. Many of the programs I interviewed at had an option to take a year off for research so that may be a good time to start a family. Personally, I think it would be extremely hard to be pregnant or have a new child during the first couple of years of residency, so I plan to wait at least until I'm a senior and maybe even until I'm done with residency. Good luck.

 

[blotto geltaco]

I saw a pregnant ortho resident doing surgery a few weeks ago. She looked like she was about to pop.

 

[Giving My .02]

How would you rank the surgery fields from least friendly to most friendly for women (women with/without families)?

 

[asdf123]

How would you rank the surgery fields from least friendly to most friendly for women (women with/without families)?

Very variable depending on the program. I think ortho and neurosurg have historically been least friendly, especially ortho. But trend is for more women to go into ortho. Times are changing, and as the old school physicians retire, things will change. But discrimination will not go away any time soon.

I think ophthalmology and ENT are most friendly to women.

 

[Orthodoc40]

I am in my 2nd year of medical school and am seriously considering orthopedics as a career. I am getting very mixed opinions from people about being a woman in ortho who wants to have a family because of the amount of time ortho demands. I have even heard that while a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to do surgery. However, very little of my info is coming from orthopedic surgeons, and none from female ortho surgeons. Does any one out there have some advice and/or information about this. Any woman out there that did/are doing ortho and have a family? Would you do it again?

Thanks for all your help!

My mentor is a female orthopedic surgeon, who is married to an orthopedic surgeon. I don't know if it was their plan, but they didn't start their family until after they were both finished with their residencies and fellowships.
She said she worked right up to the day before she delivered, but I don't know if that was only clinical or included OR time. I'll see if I can find out from her...

 

[OrthoDreamer]

Thanks for all the info!

 

[sunflower79]

(oops, duplicated message)

 

[sunflower79]

I know a lady surgeon, relatively new here on faculty, and she recently had a baby. I do believe she worked in the OR up to delivery. But I would imagine you can adjust your schedule as you like when you're practicing.

The above surgeon told me Pitt is friendly to women and the chair is very enthusiastic about recruiting more women. Now, just as recently as <10 years ago there was a resident who was the only woman in her class and she was really super tough. She told me never let 'em see you cry, and you do have to work harder than the men to get the same credit. My sense of the current residents is that they are very tough women also, more so than the ob/gyn docs (can't compare to surgery residents since I haven't done that rotation yet).

Hope that helps. good luck

 

[JennOR]

. I have even heard that while a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to do surgery. However, very little of my info is coming from orthopedic surgeons, and none from female ortho surgeons. Does any one out there have some advice and/or information about this. Any woman out there that did/are doing ortho and have a family? Would you do it again?

This is probably becausethey use so much fluoro in the or. A lot of female orthos with kids tend to drop out because it is so time demanding. But there are alot of women i met that are married without kids that love it.

I've heard a lot of anecdotal things about bone cement and pregnancy being a bad combo. The research is limited. Ethics, and all.

 

[madtowngirl]

I've heard a lot of anecdotal things about bone cement and pregnancy being a bad combo. The research is limited. Ethics, and all.

they dont let us in the room if they're using bone cement. And anyone in the room who's female gets asked at least 5 times if there's any way they could be pregnant . . .