BLOG: On writing as a woman in medicine
The overarching theme of last year’s Women in Medicine Summit, or WIMS, was the power of stories.
Keynote speaker Kimberly D. Manning, MD, taught us to embrace the legacy narrative. Jessi Gold, MD, MS, and Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD, showed us how to use writing as a tool for advocacy. Brittani James, MD, and Brandi Jackson, MD, gave us goosebumps with their use of storytelling in “Healing While Black.” As an aspiring woman physician writer, here are some of my key takeaways from the 2021 WIMS.
Deliberate practice
As clinical trainees, we learn to distinguish normal breath sounds from the rhonchi of pneumonia or the crackles of heart failure by listening to many lungs, presenting our exam to our attending teachers and receiving feedback on our findings. It is only through practicing the physical exam with direct feedback that we become expert clinicians.
To become better writers, we must engage in this same rigorous deliberate practice. We must write and receive feedback on our work. Both Dr. Manning and Suzanne Koven, MD, spoke of how they used blogs as a space to engage in this writing practice.
A blog not only allows you to write in the creation of posts, but readers can also give feedback through comments or the contact page. This feedback will help you as a writer understand what resonates with your readers. Over time you will develop the topics and style of writing that lands best with your intended audience.
Read the full blog post at Women in Medicine Summit.
For more information:
Jennifer Caputo-Seidler, MD, is a hospitalist and assistant professor of medicine at University of South Florida. She can be reached on Twitter @jennifermcaputo.
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