A career in surgery requires individuals to navigate several challenges, including gaining requisite clinical and technical knowledge, finding a preferred discipline and practice setting, and growing within and eventually into a leader in your organization. And the most successful surgeons will agree that they did not achieve their potential alone.
In today’s Olga M. Jonasson Lecture, “Pay It Forward—The Enduring Impact of Mentors,” Jennifer S. Lawton, MD, FACS, will discuss how the support of mentors is vital for early career surgeons and pays dividends for experienced surgeons as well.
The Named Lecture takes place 2:30–3:30 pm in Room W-176.
For Dr. Lawton, delivering this lecture is a gratifying experience because of the outsized impact that the eponymous Olga Jonasson, MD, FACS, had on the world of surgery.
“I never met Dr. Jonasson, so she was not a direct mentor, but she is what I call a visible mentor because she was the first woman chair of a department of surgery in the US,” said Dr. Lawton, the Richard Bennett Darnall Professor of Cardiac Surgery and chief of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.
“For many women or others who didn't think they could be surgeons, or who didn't think they could attain that level of achievement, she was inspiring as an example of what it possible,” Dr. Lawton said, adding that Dr. Jonasson was known for her mentorship and for promoting others for new career opportunities, nominating them for committees or speaking engagements, and so on.
“As surgeons, we do need to pay it forward, because we've all benefited from that type of mentorship,” she said.
The importance of mentorship applies to everyone, but Dr. Lawton will discuss how individuals who are in groups that are underrepresented in medicine may get a particular benefit. This is especially true if they can find a mentor who has some of the same lived experience—though that is not always a simple matter.
“There can be a scarcity of mentors available for young women surgeons, and that applies to other groups as well,” she said.
It becomes a “vicious cycle,” where there aren’t enough similar mentors, and so when those who do exist add mentorship to their responsibilities, they can become overwhelmed—consequently, they may not recommend mentorship or the career to potential future surgeons, she said.
This is a particular concern today, as the growing shortage of surgeons in the US could be exacerbated by failing to foster a supportive professional culture.
Dr. Lawton said that early in her career, all the mentors she had were men, as were most leaders in her discipline of cardiothoracic surgery. Some 25 years later, she notes that there are many more women in leadership positions who can and should act as mentors, because they can provide a critical, positive perspective on what is possible.
“I often tell people, ‘If you want to find a mentor in a certain group, particularly a woman who has the combination of things that you want to do—build a family, be involved in research, grow in the ranks of clinical practice—they are out there,’” she said. “You just need someone to guide you to the person who can say, ‘I did all those things, here's how you do it, or it's challenging, but rewarding.’”
In addition to providing an overview of how to be a good mentor (and a good mentee) and navigating the mentor-mentee relationship, the rewarding nature of mentorship, sponsorship, and invested leadership is a topic that Dr. Lawton wants to emphasize in the lecture. As Dr. Jonasson surely knew, paying it forward is a rich source of career satisfaction.
“One of the best parts of my job, as a mentor, leader, and as a chief of my division, is operating with trainees and watching them excel, receive awards, get promoted, or get into a certain organization as a member. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch them succeed,” she said.
