Mentor

Men can play an important role as advocates for women in the workplace in medical-related positions and beyond, according to presenters at this year’s virtual Women in Medicine Summit.

There comes a time in one’s career when colleagues constantly ask, “When are you going to stop working?”

With rising infection rates in the United States constituting a national emergency, COVID-19 continues to affect all facets of life through institutional shutdowns, numerous lockdowns and the cancellation of many milestone events. Of the many event cancellations impacting the medical community, Match Day 2020 is challenging medical students and leaders alike to explore a new landscape for celebration, shedding light on the bigger picture of what it truly means to work in the medical field amid largescale pandemics.

I fell in love with immunology as a first-year medical student at Harvard in a class taught by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf. It was the mid-1980s, and the HIV epidemic was emerging in all its perplexing horror, the virus devastating the immune system through unknown means. I had friends who were stigmatized and dying from HIV, which made it personal. When I was a third-year medical student in 1987, Chip Schooley was my ID attending. He was involved in clinical trials to treat HIV as well as laboratory research to understand HIV immunology. His brilliance and passion for patient care and research were inspiring, and that is when I became hooked on ID! I decided then that I would dedicate my career to fighting the HIV epidemic through clinical care and research to unravel how HIV evades and depletes the immune system. I was fortunate that Chip recruited me to perform my ID fellowship at the University of Colorado and then to join the faculty. Although there were many challenges, the path has been fulfilling. I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue an academic career in ID to focus on what they think is important and find good mentors!

DALLAS — Two events held here helped showcase the goals of the new Women in Arthroplasty Committee of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons. One of the events, a booth crawl, for which about 71 women in arthroplasty registered, from orthopedic surgeons to nurses, physician assistants and others, was held Friday, Nov. 8.

ATLANTA — Over the past 2 years, women have represented 44.9% of speakers and moderators at the American College of Rheumatology annual meetings, according to a presenter here. Though slightly higher than the mean reported for U.S. medical conferences in 2017, more work should be done to achieve equal representation.

I did my internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital in the years immediately before the advent of protease inhibitors would change the face of ART. In addition to caring for many young gay men with AIDS, I saw the side of the epidemic that even today remains relatively hidden in the United States, and is operative throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa: young women — often black — who presented late in the disease, having been infected by boyfriends or husbands. I was on call when one of my favorite patients, Shirley B., was admitted to die, and the team paged me to let me know so I could see her. I’ll never forget their kindness in doing that and my visit to her room. These experiences solidified not only my interest in ID but in advancing women’s reproductive health and autonomy related to ID and HIV prevention. Vaginal health? Female-controlled prevention methods? These were not sexy concepts that attracted big names during my subsequent training and early research career. Luckily, through persistence and commitment and probably some measure of stubborn cluelessness, I connected with some brave visionary mentors who believed there was a future in this arena and who themselves had battled for sexual and reproductive health — women, LGBT people, others not always at the proverbial table when funding or policy priorities are set. The rest is my personal history, and I know that only in ID would I have been able to accomplish any of it.

Back in my college days at Michigan — Go Blue! — I had the fortune to be a Dannemiller intern, part of a small group of students who were mentored by Kathie Dannemiller, a dynamic consultant who is regarded as the “godmother of organizational development.”

SLACK Incorporated is excited to announce the winner of The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing’s 8th annual Innovation Award.

One of the most effective ways to create meaning in our lives is to serve as a mentor to others. Advising, counseling and showing the way to a younger colleague helps us to get out of ourselves and focus outwardly on the wellbeing of another.