Expert confronts challenges of U.S. health care system through ‘lens of women physicians’
Editor's Note: This is part one of a three-part Healio Exclusive series on Women on a Mission.
One of the major challenges of the U.S. health care system is that it formed during a time when not many women were a part of the workforce.
Thus, the old system was not built for the success of women.
This became the impetus behind the creation of the Women in Medicine Summit and the Women in Medicine nonprofit organization — to be a guiding light and force for all women in medicine.
“Women in Medicine has changed the lives of a countless number of people who have interacted with the nonprofit or the summit in some way or another, and we are truly excited about the continued success of it all,” Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, associate professor of medicine with tenure in the division of hematology/oncology at University of Illinois Cancer Center in Chicago and consulting editor for Healio Women in Oncology, told Healio.
The goal of the nonprofit is not only to provide education — one component of getting more women into leadership — but also to provide more networking opportunities, leadership training and a host of other opportunities, Jain continued.
“Something I have learned over the years is that many people who end up in leadership positions do not always end up there because they are necessarily the right person, but because they know the right people,” she said. “Our aim is to help women in medicine not only obtain the skills they need to be successful and give them the exposure to help them get into those positions, but to help connect them to the right network and propel them into the pathway of whatever it is they want to do in their careers.”
‘Echoed statements’
Jain’s own experience of returning to work from maternity leave with her twin children made her realize she was not alone in the challenges she faced as a mom, physician and trainee in medicine.
“Many of the challenges that I faced that I thought were related to my own ‘missing links,’ so to speak, turned out to be because of inequities within the health care system instead,” Jain said. “Many other women echoed the same statements that I had, and I wondered why did I not know that all of this was happening to other people and why did I keep blaming myself?
“That is when I created women in medicine programming at Northwestern University. A year later, when I was recruited away from Northwestern, I decided there was such a great need for this that I wanted to launch something separate from any institution or organization — that is when I created the Women in Medicine Summit, followed by the WIM nonprofit.”
More than 400 attendees attended the inaugural year of the summit, which led Jain to decide to offer the meeting annually. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“It was during that time that so many women were reaching out to me saying they needed more — they needed something to feel connected. We then started launching webinars, then a Longitudinal Leadership Program, followed by a speaker’s bureau, and then a Women in Medicine research lab,” Jain said. “Then my dad — who is my original mentor, sponsor, and advocate — suggested that we needed an organization to be ‘the umbrella’ of all these incredible initiatives we created, and that is how the Women in Medicine nonprofit originated.”
‘Lens of women physicians’’
In addition to a host of other events held throughout the year, including the annual summit in September, the Women in Medicine nonprofit will host a panel on Women Physicians Day, Feb. 3, dubbed “Reshaping U.S. Health Care Through the Lens of Women Physicians.”
“We will talk about addressing the challenges in our health care system, looking at it through the ‘lens of women physicians,’” Jain said. “The panel will include discussions about how women’s health and women’s health policies impact all medical specialties. There is a lot of focus right now on women’s health, fertility, reproduction and reproductive rights. One thing that often gets lost is the fact that these types of policies and decisions that are being made impact women’s health as a whole but also impact men’s health as well. It impacts everybody in our communities — anyone who ever touches health care is impacted by these inequities but so much gets lost during these polarizing discussions.”
While most of these events take place in Illinois, Jain hopes to grow the nonprofit nationally in the coming years with events held throughout the country.
“We are growing fast, which goes to show the need for this and the power behind what we are trying to accomplish,” she said. “So many people of all genders have been wanting to get involved, so we are creating pathways for more individuals to get engaged with the work that we’re doing to drive change on a national level.”
New online community
One of the most exciting things to happen in 2024 for Women in Medicine is the launch of the first-of-its-kind online female physician community platform.
“We are launching an online female physician community that will, first and foremost, provide a safe social networking space for women physicians to network, connect and even share memes if they want,” Jain said. “It is an online networking community that will also offer educational content and resources, such as webinars, live streaming courses and other opportunities for year-round development. Whether it’s negotiation strategies, finance strategies, job searching or navigating being a woman physician in the health care space, or being a woman executive, a parent, someone who is struggling with infertility, there will be content in all of those spaces through this online community. Our hope is to provide a safe space for social networking that may be a welcome relief to some of the more negative transitions that we have seen some online communities undergo recently.”
In addition to providing the safe social networking aspect that many crave to grow their own networks, Jain said the platform will allow women physicians to gain opportunities to network with those outside of their normal circles, similar to other currently available social media platforms.
“This platform will provide vetted, regular content to allow women physicians to access things that are going to help with their career and personal development, and we will eventually offer coaching opportunities as well. This is an exciting initiative that we’re undertaking, and the first 150 individuals who sign up to be a part of this community will get 50% off of the membership fee,” she said. “So many social platforms have become more toxic in recent years, and my hope is that this replaces or supplements that for some. We will still use those other platforms to engage with people outside of medicine, but we need a safe, new space for women physicians.”
For more information about the online platform and to register, visit https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLRR5JVXX031P/checkout/UD7LIXWGH6XSH5RK2GH23VZK.
Her why
Data have shown that women are leaving medicine and the health care field in droves for so many reasons, which will ultimately have a negative impact on the health of all individuals, Jain said.
“We need to be doing everything that we can to drive the change that not only keeps women in the health care space but also drives them into positions of leadership, because the data consistently show that when the leadership is representative of the patient population being treated, outcomes are better,” she said.
Jain said there are so many reasons why initiatives like Women in Medicine are important now more than ever.
“When we talk about women of color or women with intersectional identities, the challenges are even greater, so it is incredibly important to have a focus on these women as well because the disparities are even worse for those populations,” she said. “Women should not have to work in environments where they are being talked down to, bullied or sexually harassed. They should be fairly appreciated for the work they’re doing — so many women do the invisible work that allows organizations to receive awards and keep them afloat, and none of these women are getting recognized for it.”
Even bigger than that, Jain continued, research has shown time and time again that women’s health initiatives are driven forward when women are leading the charge — that is a fact.
“Research has also shown that women surgeons have lower complications rates, less mortality and morbidity when they operate on patients. Women physicians are also less likely to have patients readmitted to the hospital, regardless of gender,” she said. “It’s not just about female patients or women’s health, but about the health of all of our communities. Women physicians are great physicians, and they should be treated as such.”
For more information:
Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, can be reached at sjain03@gmail.com.
Collapse
Healio Interview
Read more about