Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI): Update and Significance
Myron Yaster MD, Allison Fernandez MD MBA, and Lynne G. Maxwell MD
Gender equity in academic medicine is an ongoing issue. Indeed, “for the first time ever women make up the majority of American medical school students”.(1) “Although women make up 48% of medical school graduates, they constitute only 25% of full professors at academic institutions”.(2) As bad as it is in medicine and surgery in general, it has been particularly terrible in anesthesiology. Mentorship and sponsorship are vital to narrowing this gap.(3) A key to faculty and professional advancement is the building of professional networks. Anesthesiology, because of the “siloed nature of anesthesia practice rarely allows for social opportunities common to other medical specialties, such as attendance at lectures or daily patient rounds. Even within the operating room environment, opportunities for social interaction with other anesthesia colleagues are often limited. The shift at many academic institutions to a private practice model, wherein attendings work alone in operating rooms as opposed to supervising trainees, has further exacerbated isolation in an environment that traditionally encouraged interaction through teaching and shared patient care”.(4)
Around 2018, using the resources and umbrella of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, Drs. Jenny Lee, Nina Deutsch, and Jamie Schwartz developed The Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI). WELI “is dedicated to assisting women in pediatric anesthesiology with gaining skills, knowledge, confidence, and opportunities to achieve their career goals. A key component of this mission is to pair/partner participating women (the protégés) with a volunteer leader in the pediatric anesthesia community. These leaders have a history of faculty mentoring and personal career success, and they work more closely to assist protégés in their specific area of interest. We call these leaders WELI ‘advisors’, and they use aspects of both advising and mentoring when working with their WELI protégés. Additionally, advisors and protégés participate in twice-yearly skills workshops led by executive advisors and will be provided other outside resources on achieving success in academic medicine” (https://weli.pedsanesthesia.org/). The program has been spectacularly successful (5), and as today’s original article and its accompanying editorial point out, may serve as a model for other specialties and underrepresented minorities. I’ve asked Allison Fernandez MD, a WELI protoge who we recently highlighted in the November 23 PAAD for her Women of Impact in Anesthesiology webseries https://www.asahq.org/womenofimpact to assist in this review.
Finally, aside from their great success, I’d also like to applaud the authors of this and the other WELI papers for writing up and having their results published in first rate, peer-reviewed journals. WELI could easily have been an in-house, Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, success story, much akin to many of the quality improvement projects many individuals and departments perform to improve care. By taking the extra, and much more difficult steps of obtaining IRB approval, analyzing, writing up, and submitting results for peer-review, the results benefit the wider medical community and equally importantly help the writers in their own professional development and academic promotion. This too is a key model for academic success. Myron Yaster MD
Editorial
Katherine L Zaleski. Society for Pediatric Anesthesia's Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative: A Reason to Smile More? Anesth Analg. 2021 Dec 1;133(6):1494-1496. PMID: 34784333
Original article
Jamie McElrath Schwartz, Scott D Markowitz, Samuel D Yanofsky, Sean Tackett, Laura K Berenstain, Lawrence I Schwartz, Randall Flick, Eugenie Heitmiller, John Fiadjoe, Helen H Lee, Anita Honkanen, Shobha Malviya, Franklyn P Cladis, Jennifer K Lee, Nina Deutsch. Empowering Women as Leaders in Pediatric Anesthesiology: Methodology, Lessons, and Early Outcomes of a National Initiative. Anesth Analg. 2021 Dec 1;133(6):1497-1509. PMID: 34517375
Today’s PAAD describes “WELI's development and implementation with an early assessment of effectiveness at 2 years. Members received an anonymous, voluntary survey by e-mail to assess whether they believed WELI was beneficial in several broad domains: career development, networking, project implementation and completion, goal setting, mentorship, well-being, and promotion and leadership”.(2)
The response rate was 60.5% (92 of 152) which is about as good as you can get with on-line surveys. The majority of respondents “ranked several aspects of WELI to be very or extremely valuable, including the protoge-advisor dyads, workshops, nomination to join WELI, and virtual facilitated networking. For most members, WELI helped to improve optimism about their professional future. Most also reported that WELI somewhat or absolutely contributed to project improvement or completion, finding new collaborators, and obtaining invitations to be visiting speakers. Among those who applied for promotion or leadership positions, 51% found WELI to be somewhat or absolutely valuable to their application process, and 42% found the same in applying for leadership positions”. Qualitiative responses mirrored the positive quantitative responses. Identified themes included (1) feelings of empowerment and confidence, (2) acquisition of new skills in mentoring, coaching, career development, and project implementation, (3) clarification and focus on goal setting, (4) creating meaningful connections through networking, and (5) challenges from COVID-19 and inability to sustain the advisor-protégé connection. WELI is well on its way to achieving its mission to empower highly productive female anesthesiologists to achieve equity, promotion and leadership.
The long term impact of WELI has yet to be determined and continued long-term follow-up as to whether it contributes to academic promotion and attainment of leadership positions is planned and essential. Hopefully this model will be duplicated in other specialties, for underrepresented minorities, and in non-academic settings.
Myron Yaster MD, Allison Fernandez MD MBA, and Lynne G. Maxwell MD
References
1. Zaleski KL. Society for Pediatric Anesthesia's Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative: A Reason to Smile More? Anesth Analg 2021;133:1494-6.
2. Schwartz JM, Markowitz SD, Yanofsky SD, Tackett S, Berenstain LK, Schwartz LI, Flick R, Heitmiller E, Fiadjoe J, Lee HH, Honkanen A, Malviya S, Cladis FP, Lee JK, Deutsch N. Empowering Women as Leaders in Pediatric Anesthesiology: Methodology, Lessons, and Early Outcomes of a National Initiative. Anesth Analg 2021;133:1497-509.
3. Travis EL, Doty L, Helitzer DL. Sponsorship: a path to the academic medicine C-suite for women faculty? Acad Med 2013;88:1414-7.
4. Margolis RD, Berenstain LK, Janosy N, Yanofsky S, Tackett S, Schwartz JM, Lee JK, Deutsch N, Sinskey JL. Grow and Advance through Intentional Networking: A pilot program to foster connections within the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative in the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. Paediatr Anaesth 2021;31:944-52.
5. Schwartz JM, Wittkugel E, Markowitz SD, Lee JK, Deutsch N. Coaching for the pediatric anesthesiologist: Becoming our best selves. Paediatr Anaesth 2021;31:85-91.