Editor’s Note: A brilliant resident-engineered arrangement that led to a positive result.
In the distant past and even occasionally today, women were and are not welcomed into all orthopaedic residency programs. There are hold-out faculty who feel women do not belong among the ranks. Our program was unique decades ago, where under a forward thinking chairman, 25% of the residents were women over a brief period. That said, we still had hold-out attendings who preferred that we not be there or that they not work with us.
As luck would have it during a particular year, three of the female residents were assigned to one of two adult services in a busy public hospital. Knowing that we had to work for three months with one of these “less enthusiastic” attendings, we intentionally arranged one of the services to be filled three female residents. We had a female chief, third- and second-year resident. As I recall, upon meeting his team for the next three months, he asked if we were “The Bangles, an all-female singing group of that era. We worked hard, we had fun, and he couldn’t escape us. At the end of the rotation, he appeared to have altered his point of view at least as it pertained to our group of three women. This was very affirming and demonstrated that under special circumstances, small change can be achieved!