5 questions with Scrub Sisters founder, Jacqueline Winkelmann, MD, FAAP
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Every founder and entrepreneur is looking to solve a problem or create something that they wish they would have had for themselves, according to Jacqueline Winkelmann, MD, FAAP.
That is what led to the creation of Scrub Sisters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that consists of women physicians and physicians-in-training on a mission to create a nurturing and empowering community within the medical profession.
“The path of a woman in medicine is quite unique,” Winkelmann, founder of Scrub Sisters, told Healio. “Having mentors and sponsors as well as people to look up to and relate to is not only key to success professionally but also a very strong component of burnout prevention. Knowing that you’re not alone, and that others have gone through what you are going through and have made it, is everything.”
Healio spoke with Winkelmann about what led to her career in medicine, how Scrub Sisters came about and what the mission of the organization is, as well as her hope for the organization in the next 5 to 10 years.
Healio: What initially led you to a career in medicine?
Winkelmann: I was born and raised in Puerto Rico and later moved to the U.S. for undergrad in St. Louis. My first medical mentor was my mother’s uncle, one of the first pediatric surgeons in Puerto Rico. I used to travel with him to see his post-op patients, and would go into the operating room with him — things that are not allowed in this day and age, but it was really inspiring to me.
It was during that time that I started to have a strong passion for the pediatrics specialty. After undergrad, I lived in Chicago for 10 years as I completed medical school and residency. My husband and I later moved to Southern California where I practiced as a pediatric hospitalist for 20 years.
Within the past few years, I have stepped away from clinical medicine. I still have some administrative roles but have been doing mostly consulting and advisory work for companies that make pediatric consumer products and medical devices.
Healio: Who helped mentor and guide you in your career?
Winkelmann: I have had many mentors in my life, starting of course with my uncle in Puerto Rico. Also, during my first research job, my boss was extremely supportive. I had the chance to work with a female cardiothoracic surgeon who was chair of the department of surgery. From very early on in my career, I had a female role model who showed me and taught me that women in medicine can sit in very high places.
However, it is important for other women in medicine to understand that mentors don’t necessarily all have to be in medicine. For example, I worked at Children’s Hospital of Orange County for 20 years and held many leadership roles, including chief of staff where I ended up sitting on the board of directors for several years. In that role, I had the privilege of having our hospital’s CEO, COO and CFO all be women, which is very much the minority and a unique situation. For me, it was amazing to learn from these women, not only about how to lead, but how to think strategically and how to collaborate with the men at the table. It was a great opportunity to learn how to navigate my professional career in medicine, even from women who were not doctors.
Healio: How did Scrub Sisters come about and what is it about?
Winkelmann: I love teaching and mentoring, and, honestly, it was the one thing that I missed with my career as a pediatric hospitalist in a community hospital. It all came about because I was asked to give a talk at my hospital and, afterwards, they broke us up into small groups on Zoom. Two students in my room both expressed that they were so happy to hear the story of a woman in medicine.
One of those students was a Latina student and she said even more so it was important for her to see me because we Latina doctors make up only 2% of female physicians in the U.S.
Finding your specific role model can sometimes be challenging, and while I have been mentoring my friends’ kids and my nieces and nephews along their medical path, the feedback from those two students that I didn’t know personally was impactful. They both asked me if I would be willing to mentor them, and I of course immediately said yes. That’s when I decided that I would love to make this part of my final career chapter, so to speak.
But then I decided that I didn’t want these students to benefit from my singular experience and that's how Scrub Sisters was born — and I have to give credit to ChatGPT for coming up with the name. As a matter of fact, the two students who were in my group on the Zoom meeting are part of my founding team and core group. They have leadership roles within Scrubs Sisters.
One pillar of Scrub Sisters is community, because it’s important to share different experiences and learn from different people. Also, mentorship, which goes both ways because some of these students are already being mentors themselves. Even during training or as a first-year medical student, we can mentor others who are before us who are trying to apply to medical school. I am already seeing mentorship and leadership opportunities for the younger generation who never felt like they could be mentors; they always felt like their role was to be a mentee. Seeing that shift has been great.
Another pillar is real-life conversations. I wish I would have had a Scrub Sister back when I was starting medical school and had just gotten married because, again, life goes parallel to our medical training that may or may not include marriage and children — and then later on, retirement and, unfortunately, sometimes divorce, empty nesting and taking care of our elderly parents.
There isn’t really a place to have those conversations that I have found in the context of a life in medicine for women. Those conversations are just as important as discussing how to get into medical school, how to succeed in residency, how to achieve gender equity in your hospital or progressing your academic career. These real-life conversations are key to not just your personal professional success, but also for burnout prevention.
Our last two pillars are diversity, which of course is close to my heart being in the 2% of Latina physicians in the U.S., and advocacy work that will focus on trainee rights in the areas of fertility, pregnancy and maternity leave.
Those are our pillars as a group and then our end goal, financially, is to establish a scholarship program for women applying to medical school and residency, specifically because in doing research, I found that the cost of applying to medical school right now in the U.S. is estimated between $5,000 and $10,000. So, that is already the first barrier to a life in medicine for many people. Even in speaking to some of the medical students, some told me they had to take mandatory gap years so they could work full time to save enough money to apply to medical school because they can get loans fairly easily to pay for medical school, but not as easily to be able to fund applications to medical school.
Healio: Looking ahead, where do you hope to see Scrub Sisters in the next 5 to 10 years?
Winkelmann: My dream is that we’ll have a large membership of more women so that we can have these conversations, as well as mentorship and community.
We will have an annual in-person conference, because in-person relationships are valuable. I don’t necessarily want to be an anonymous social media group. I want women to get to know and meet each other, and we will accomplish that by establishing local chapters.
I would also love to have a Scrub Sisters medical mission. I am very passionate about medical missions and have participated in many, mostly to Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
I would, of course, love to have a robust scholarship program, and my dream is to have local chapters in all 50 states and maybe even beyond the United States. I am very excited to announce that this summer we will be launching our first three Scrub Sisters chapters. The first Scrub Sisters chapter will be in Puerto Rico, which makes it special and meaningful to me. We’re also starting a Utah chapter, which is where I will be moving to in the summer, and a Southern California chapter.
Healio: What advice can you offer our women in oncology readers?
Winkelmann: Being in the mid- to late-career stage of life and medicine, it’s important to understand early on that work-life balance is a myth. There will be stages of life that will feel completely unbalanced, and that is OK. Seek help during those stages and do not attach any guilt to that because, as women, we always have this need to be everything to everyone, and that is just not a reality if you’re going to preserve your own sanity, mental health and well-being. That is something very important to keep in mind very early on. It’s OK to not be “balanced all the time.” You will have to shift priority and time to one or the other.
It is also important to try and always operate from a place of joy — your own joy, not your parents’ or spouse’s, not even your children’s joy. Do what brings you joy. As parents, we always talk about how we have to take care of ourselves as mothers to be able to take care of our children — well, it’s the same in career. We have to take care of our own well-being to be able to take care of our patients, etc. It needs to start with you.
Believing in yourself and not letting others define what’s possible and meaningful for you is also very important. Lastly, surround yourself with people who support you and encourage you, like Scrub Sisters, because it makes all the difference in career and in life.
For more information:
Jacqueline Winkelmann, MD, FAAP, can be reached at drjacq@scrubsisters.org.
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