Dear Boys,
I am so blessed to be your mom. You each have amazing personalities, unique talents, and special characteristics. I know someday you will grow up and be strong men. Kind men. Respectful men. Successful men. Men like your grandfathers. Men like your father.
Someday when you go out into the world, you will find yourself working with all different kinds of women. You will work for women, beside women, and …
A physician mother to her sons
Recently I had the privilege of an attending a leadership course at a very prestigious institution. I spent a week immersed in self-evaluation and heard great lectures on team building, leadership strategy, economics, conflict resolution, and communication. I met 60+ health care leaders from all over the world. It was a great week, and I came home inspired and full of ideas.
The class was full of physicians, health care executives, …
Are you giving examples the minority can relate to?
When doing scientific research, we expect to fail. In fact, we write the likelihood of negative findings into our protocols and plans. We expect things to not always work as we think they might, and we accept that we may not prove what we set out to prove.
In the scientific community, we depend on complete transparency when we fail. We depend on it to advance science, to help people, and …
We need to embrace our failures
Being 100 percent, authentically you is extremely freeing. It is awesome, brave, and takes courage and strength.
It is also completely exhausting at times.
Like, I-think-I-have-Influenza tired.
The more I age, the more I advance. The more I advance, the more I realize how living my life in the constraints of other’s opinions or wants or desires for me is not an option. This leads me to be lonely at times, and on …
Is this is why women so often settle?
The practice of medicine is a lot like the practice of parenting. It is full of highs and lows, moments of pure joy and those of devastating heartache.
When I talk to my friends who are parents, they agree with me. Some of the most difficult times as a parent is watching your kids fail. When your child is hurting, it hurts far worse than if you had experienced it first …
The practice of medicine is a lot like parenting
As a cardiac anesthesiologist, there are times I care for patients who are faced with a tough decision: to take their chance on a very high-risk surgery, or let nature take its course. It is in these times I feel most humble and most human, as I may be the last one to hear the last words they speak.
Recently I was at a social event and introducing myself to some …
For an anesthesiologist, this is the hardest part of medicine
I am going to discuss something that is really important for women. It’s going to get a lot of criticism, and it’s OK. I can take it.
Your clothing.
That’s right. I am here to tell you that what you wear, and how you dress, matters.
Why? Because how you feel in your clothes affects the way you walk, talk, smile, interact, and well, lead.
Don’t mistake what I am saying. I am not going …
One of the most important things my mother taught me was to choose my friends intelligently. From a very young age, I remember my mother quoting Proverbs to me and telling me this, “Choose your counsel wisely.” The older I get, the more I believe who I allow to influence me plays an enormous part in the place I find myself in today.
Research has shown you become like the five …
I want to talk about the word everyone seems to use: drama. This word is used in many facets, to describe conflict, negative interactions with others, disagreements, or obstruction to a new idea.
No one likes drama. Yet some people seem to instigate it, and others seem to have to deal with it on a rotating basis.
We all wish we could ignore it, avoid it, and leave it for people who …
As a leader, you can be liked or respected. But rarely both.
I remember the exact moment I realized the amazing power of women; that together, women can accomplish anything they put their minds to.
I grew up in a household of women. I had no brothers to compete with, and my parents always encouraged us to learn and develop leadership skills. However, even growing up in an encouraging environment, I still developed an unconscious bias. In school and in college, I often …
The exact moment this doctor realized the amazing power of women
I have spent the last year doing a deep dive into my personal leadership style. I’ve done this for self-improvement and because some great leaders and mentors have challenged me to take a look at my skills. I’ve read countless blogs and books on leadership, specifically women leaders, and how they have succeeded at the helm.
There are a million different things books will tell you to be if you want …
This is the key to becoming a great leader
We as women have to stop saying “I’m sorry” for things out of our control. When we apologize for things we are not responsible for, we take a step backwards in the advancement of women in the workplace.
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist, which means I care for patients who are undergoing open-heart surgery. I work in an academic medical center and train doctors to become anesthesiologists. The operating room (OR) can …
Before you say “I’m sorry,” I challenge you to think
I work in a male-dominated field. As a cardiac anesthesiologist, I work with mostly male cardiac surgeons in a department where the majority of my fellow anesthesiologists are male. I work with some fantastic male colleagues. They are caring, skilled doctors, and I consider many of them to be friends.
While most of them know how to handle emergencies, trauma and difficult work situations, many times they clam up when we …
15 tips for working with women
“He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I was a third-year medical student on a Sunday morning when the reality of what I had chosen as my life career truly hit me in the gut. At that moment, I realized how intimate the practice of medicine was and that I would have to bring not only my brain and skills to work …
Doctors: Don’t emotionally detach
I read something recently that shocked me. Despite working in health care for 15 years, I had no idea that nearly 80 percent of the U.S. health care workforce is comprised of women (according to the Bureau of Statistics.)
I did know, however, that women make up less than 20 percent of executive boards and less than 40 percent of middle management in health care. Those that do exist in the …
How can we ensure medical leadership includes more women?
If you had told me I would be writing someday on women’s issues, I would have grabbed a pulse oximeter and placed it on your finger to check your oxygen levels. As a physician scientist, I have spent the majority of my career reading, studying and writing on clinical medicine. Then, something changed.
For years, I have had the pleasure of working with and for some pretty phenomenal men in medicine. …
For medicine to grow, we need to look at our own biases
As a physician, I am often discouraged when I turn on the news and read about the state of health care in our country. I can see all 397 sides of the debate and some truth in all sides. The enormous cost of medicine is overwhelming to comprehend for patients and families and even to those of us in medicine.
I think it is important to know all that goes into …
This is what to remember in health reform: We are all one patient
Since I was a little girl, I have been called a lot of things. Sensitive. Funny. Strong-willed. Outgoing. Take-charge. Friendly. Bossy. Focused. And my favorite — domineering.
I’ve always been a direct person. I’m an extrovert, which means I walk into a room and I am energized by the people around me. I am also a positive person; I assume you are my friend until you prove otherwise. On most days …
Go ahead and call me bossy. Bossy saves lives.
It’s still dark out when I walk into the busy and bustling preoperative area where patients and their family members crowd into small bays. They hand over their personal belongings to the RNs and their trust to me. As I walk in, I grab my patient’s hand, smile and say, “Hello. My name is Dr. Shillcutt. I am a cardiac anesthesiologist, and I am going to take care of you …
I’m your anesthesiologist. Let me explain what that means.
I was approaching 24 hours in the hospital and waiting for my partner to come into my operating room so we could do “hand-off.” That’s when I spend 15 minutes going over all of the events of the surgical case and explain my patient’s health history, his current status, my current treatment strategies, the heart ultrasound findings, and our plan for the rest of the case. As I was awaiting …
Want to fight burnout? Embrace the suck.
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