One of the most transformative moments for me as a woman in STEM happened a few years into my career as a clinician educator of Geriatric Medicine. I was working with a group of trainees on an inpatient medical service that included three medical students: two men and one woman. Over the two weeks, I noted that the woman was not a good student. She hesitated to answer medical questions posed to the group, her presentations were incomplete, she stayed quiet in the patient’s room, her notes were usually filed late, and she seemed disinterested on rounds. I was set to provide a negative evaluation and then towards the end of the rotation, I began to notice that her notes were thoughtful and complete, not reflective of her behavior on rounds. I noticed that if I asked her directed questions, she almost always had the answer. If I assigned readings to the group, it was evident that she had spent time going through them in detail. I decided to take her aside and ask her how she felt things were going. She felt inadequate. She felt like she wasn’t good enough to be a doctor, certainly not as good as her peers. She was struggling with feeling like she didn't belong in medical school. In short, she was not a bad student, she was suffering from imposter syndrome. In that moment, I recalled all the times during my medical training when I had those same feelings and when my co-women in STEM mentored me through those feelings. In that moment, I realized my own role as a mentor. As someone who suffers from imposter syndrome, I was able to offer the support she needed to regain her confidence and not only complete medical school but match into a competitive internal medicine program and cardiology fellowship. It’s so critical that women in STEM support and mentor each other because when we help another woman succeed, we ourselves succeed.
-Dr. Milta Little, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University
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