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A Recap of Our Annual Business Meeting 2

A Lunch Among Friends 3

AWAEM Award Member Highlights - And the Winners Are... 4

Work-life Balance in Academic EM: Not Necessarily a Quixotic Quest 5

News You Can Use (Unmasking the Impostor) 6

Available Committees 7

Coming Soon...

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AWAEM in BOSTONA Review of the Annual Meeting

Table of Contents

A bimonthly update to inform you of the current activities of our Academy in an effort to make this organization a strong advocate for women in academic emergency medicine.

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The Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine held their annual business meeting on June 3. All were welcomed by Kathleen Clem, esteemed President of the Academy. The meeting ensued as members of the leadership presented the many activities pursued over the last year...

While not an exhaustive list, notable accomplishments include: 1) development of this e-newsletter (thank you for reading!), 2) the organization of the Regional Advisory Committee (RAC), a group made up of members from each region that will develop networking and other opportunities for their regions (check yours out to get involved!), 3) the creation of a list of resources for funding research on women’s health (posted on the AWAEM website), and 4) the creation of an electronic presentation that describes the specialty of Emergency Medicine and encourages involvement in academic EM. This presentation is being distributed to medical schools around the country.

Two didactic sessions were planned and accepted for the SAEM meeting and both were truly a success, with full audiences of both men and women: “Testosterone, Estrogen and Chaos: Gender Differences in Communication” and “Work-life Balance in Academic Emergency Medicine: Not Necessarily a Quixotic Quest”. Check out page 5 for a brief look into what we learned!

Another great success has been the continuation of two special awards for outstanding female physicians—the Early Career Faculty Award and the Beacon Award. The winners were announced at the AWAEM Luncheon (and are highlighted on pages 4).

In addition, elections were held for the upcoming year’s officers and members of the advisory panel. We are pleased to announce the following winners:

‣Stephanie Abbuhl, President ‣Gloria Kuhn, President-Elect ‣Esther Choo, Vice President ‣Susan Watts, Secretary ‣Stacey Poznanski, Treasurer

Members of the advisory panel will be Keme Carter, Preeti Jois-Bilowich, Linda Druelinger, and Kerry Broderick. Bob Hockberger will continue as the SAEM Board liaison. Many thanks to those who served in leadership positions last year!

The meeting closed with the presentation of a special award to Kathleen Clem—the Founders Award—for her tenacious, yet positive and optimistic efforts that have established the strong foundation of the Academy. Thank you Kathy!

A Recap of Our Annual Business MeetingBoston, MA - June 3, 2011By Sue Watts, MD

“Real women don’t have flushes, they have power surges.”  

- Australian physician and author, Sandra Cabot

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Good Food, Good People, Good DiscussionsBy Stacey Poznanski, DO & Stephanie Abbuhl, MD

Members from around the country met on June 4th at the SAEM Meeting in Boston for a fabulous lunch full of lively discussion on some of today’s hottest topics for women in Academic Emergency Medicine. The experience level ranged from Residents to Chairmen (or should I say Chair Women?) and all were intermixed at eight round tables. Each table covered a preselected topic and two members had volunteered ahead of time to assist, one as the discussion leader and the other as facilitator. As lunch was served, we first handled some business. The two Annual AWAEM Awards were presented and accepted by representatives for the winners (see the next page for more on this), the newly-elected Board for 2011-2012 was introduced, and our fearless leader for the past several years, Kathleen Clem, was presented with the Founders Award. It was a proud moment for this organization as she received a standing ovation. From there, the discussions took off ! Advice was given, ideas were generated, partnerships were created, and friendships were built. We ended up with so much fantastic material from these discussions, we would be doing a disservice to you and all who were there to fit it on this one page. So we’ve decided to split it up, covering one topic each newsletter until we’ve shared it all with you! Below you will find the key points and lessons learned from the two tables that discussed the important topic of Funding and Getting Started in Research. Be sure to check out the next e-Newsletter for more great tips!

Deb Houry (Leader) & Megan Ranney (Facilitator) •Find strong mentors and collaborators - including outside the department.•Resilience to rejection…just resubmit…one record is 8 resubmissions for a single paper!•Be creative; look outside the box to develop new ways of approaching the same problem.•Be involved with grant/manuscript/abstract reviews.•Look at what comments in the rejection are valid vs soft; be responsive to them.•Present your grant to peers prior to submitting to the foundation or NIH.•Just start writing. It’s OK to have a bad first draft – you have to start somewhere.•Develop a track record of publications and small grants. •Keep an eye on the goal…and set deadlines for yourself.•Be constantly working on projects at every stage: designing, ongoing data collection, manuscripts, new funding. •Turn your abstracts into manuscripts!•How do you make research appealing to junior colleagues and mentees?

• Have your mentees start questioning and designing early.•Have resources to help them •through known roadblocks.•Let them work in groups. •Don’t feel that you have to mentor everyone…let them weed themselves out…start with IRB approval & lit reviews.

•Is being a research director a worthwhile goal?

•You need to love mentoring junior folks.•Don’t just be an administrator.•Keep your feet in the world of being a primary researcher.•Don’t do it first...do it after you are established in your own research career.

•EM is a small world. Stay out of trouble and work hard.

Gail D’Onofrio (Leader) & Stephanie Abbuhl (Facilitator)•How do you “buy out” of clinical time? Show your chair that you have the commitment and the productivity to deserve reduced time – you need to prove yourself to the Chair if you don’t come with grant money. •Having a PhD in your department who is a mentor and research/writing expert can be an invaluable asset to everyone, especially junior faculty.•FOCUS. This will make your job easier and is the only way to become an expert. •Rejection…don’t let it stop you.•Getting a Masters…almost a must for those who want to make research the primary focus of their career. •Don’t be afraid to approach a senior person/expert to collaborate on a paper…as long as you do the bulk of the work. They can always say no, but if you are doing the vast majority of the work, they may say yes. •Team work. Teams can be particularly productive; several colleagues working together in an area, each taking turns being first author. Divide and conquer.

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Rita Cydulka, MD MS, is the winner of the 2011 AWAEM Beacon Award for Leadership and Mentorship in Emergency Medicine. Dr. Cydulka is Professor and Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and President of the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Her research includes the study of gender differences in asthma management and gender issues in faculty development. Dr. Cydulka has been widely recognized for her mentorship of female medical students, residents, and junior faculty. This award recognizes her tireless efforts for the advancement of women in academic EM over the past 25 years.

Amy Kaji, MD PhD is the winner of the 2011 AWAEM Early Career Award.  Dr. Kaji is Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UCLA. Described by her peers as a “consummate educator,” Dr. Kaji has won numerous teaching prizes and has authored or co-authored 41 peer-reviewed manuscripts. She has also been active on the SAEM Research and Planning Committees. Dr. Kaji is exemplifies how an “academician can gain the utmost respect and admiration of her colleagues, through unquestioned excellence in her clinical, educational, and administrative pursuits.”

AWAEM Member HighlightsBy Esther Choo, MD

Rita Cydulka, MD MS Amy Kaji, MD PhD Beacon Award Early Career Award

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“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.”

Danny KayeI’m ready

if you are...

Congratulations to you both and thank you for all that you do! We are always looking to honor and tell the stories of outstanding members such as these. Our specialty would not be what it is today without your efforts. Please share your canvas with us...

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One of the fantastic, and well-attended didactics presented at this year’s Annual SAEM Meeting was a topic many of us struggle to define, not to mention live out successfully. Over the course of 90 minutes, members of a distinguished panel, led by Cherri Hobgood, MD, provided insight into several important topics that underly the issue of “work-life balance.” After a brief presentation, the room divided into small groups to have more in-depth discussions on the topics, which were led and ultimately summarized by the panel members. As a member of the audience, I was very impressed by the panel and the amount of invaluable dialogue that occurred in such a short period of time. It was nearly impossible to decide which small group to join!! The advice given was so superb, I’ve included the “take-home points” given by the panel below. Enjoy!

Job Negotiations & Interviewing - Panelists Gail D'Onofrio & Katherine Helipern• Take & create the right job for you -

each department has its own tempo & values. 

• Develop the job description - goals, what do YOU want to accomplish, etc.

• What are the measures of success? - there should be unique goals/objectives for each faculty member.

• Negotiating: Salary is often standard (residency vs fellowship-trained); incentive plans; should be give & take.

• Go to the table with a plan!

Finding a Mentor - Panelist Stephanie Abbuhl• Having a mentor is associated with

decreased burnout and increased work satisfaction.

• Mentor pairs can be both Senior-Junior and Peers.

• Start with specific goals in mind and discuss them at meetings to get things started.

• Be sure the mentor passes the "gut test" before the relationship gets off the ground.

• Avoid a common pitfall of "having to please the mentor" - agreeing to things you really don't want to do because it would please your mentor. In the same light, your mentor should avoid "creating a clone."

• Content mentors are different than mentors for Network/Negotiations/Other Decisions

• Acknowledge that it takes work to find a mentor (60-70%/40-30%)

• We need mentors at different stages and they may change as time goes on. Networking may lead to this.

Tricks/Strategies to Maintaining Balance - Panelist Kathleen Clem • Know some relaxation techniques.• It’s ok to have a life; Don't apologize

for being a parent!• Double dip - combine two enjoyable

things into one. Spend time with a friend while doing something you both enjoy. Exercise while walking/running your dog.

• Compartmentalize• Schedule time for email• Spend your personal time being

guilt-free.

Learning When To Say No...or YesPanelists Tracy Sanson & Douglas Lowery-North• Change the world by changing

behavior.• You can say no. • Work = force x distance. If it

doesn't move the rock, it may not be worth it.

• Know where you want to go (what your rocks are). Have a 5 year plan, 3 year goals, 1 year, 1 month, 1 day, etc.

• Each task needs to have value to you and your job and you should bring value to it.

• Ask questions: Who's involved, What's involved, and When's the deadline? 

• We are addicted to urgent tasks. They are not always the most important.

• It may be beneficial to have "No" mentors - people who help you say “No” when you should.

• Compartmentalize your life - don't spend energy on something not moving your goal - enjoy what you're doing while you're doing it.

Maturing Within the Specialty - Panelist Lynne Richardson • Learn to work smarter, harder.• The second twenty years of your

career should be best 20 years of your life!

• Customize your job so that it consists of all things you like to do.

• Life changes = Decision points; adjust accordingly.

• Get out of the office! 

Work-life Balance in Academic EM: Not Necessarily a Quixotic Quest Summary of this Didactic from SAEM By Stacey Poznanski, DO

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To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.! ! !! ! ! ! ! ! - Kofi Annan

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Feelings of inadequacy in one’s field sometimes plague even the most accomplished scientists, especially women. Karen Kaplan analyses this apparent phenomenon and its impact.It usually happens to Cherry Murray when she is about to write a paper or give a talk on a new finding or discovery. The thoughts come unbidden, hammering inside the physicist’s head: ‘I can’t do this. I haven’t done enough experiments. I haven’t got enough data. I can’t write the paper well enough yet or give the talk.’ These aren’t the routine self-doubts of a young researcher. Murray is principal associate director for science and technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, and president of the American Physical Society. On 1 July she will become dean of Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Referring to her work, she says: “I have to tell myself this doesn’t have to be perfect.” What Murray describes — an overwhelming sense of being a fraud, a phony, of not being good enough for her job, despite much evidence to the contrary — was first identified more than 30 yearsago by two clinical psychologists who dubbed it the ‘impostor phenomenon’ (IP) (P. Clance and S. Imes Psychother. Theor. Res. 15, 241–247; 1978). In their paper, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes describe women who, despite reaching significant intellectual milestones ranging from advanced degrees to professional awards, cannot internalize their success or convince themselves they deserve it. “They consider themselves to be ‘impostors’,” wrote Clance and Imes. “Numerous achievements, which one might expect to provide ample objective evidence of superior intellectual functioning, do not appear to affect the impostor belief.” Before taking up her LLNL post, Murray spent decades at Bell Laboratories and left as senior vice-president for physical sciences and wireless research. She has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals, has won a number of awards, holds two patents and has served on more than 80 national and international scientific committees and governing boards. Yet the self-doubt still lurks. “Do I ever think I’m not qualified?” she says. “All the time.”

News You Can Use

Unmasking the Impostor By Karen Kaplan, assistant editor of Naturejobs at time of printing.

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“News You Can Use” features interesting and useful articles or books recommended by one of our members. This issue’s selection was provided by Stephanie Abbuhl, MD. This is an excerpt. You’ll find the remainder of the article here: Nature 459, 468-469 (20 May 2009.

PURGING THAT INNER CRITICHere are some strategies that may help those

struggling with impostor phenomenon. ● If you’re a student or a postdoctoral fellow, get a

supportive, understanding adviser.● If you’re working, do your best to find a

supportive, understanding mentor. ● Call on your partner or friends to be supportive

and talk you through impostor feelings. ● Hire a tutor or take a class in a topic or area

where you think your abilities are weaker. You’ll learn what you need — or realize how much you

already know. ● Make a list of your strengths. Look back at

examples of your own successful work, or positive reviews, and remind yourself of your own

accomplishments. ● Accept that some tasks will not be done perfectly. ● Be aware of your language choices. If you find yourself thinking you were ‘lucky’ to have got a

grant or published a paper, focus on what you did to earn it.

It usually happens to Cherry Murray when she is about to write a paper or give a talk on a new finding or discovery. The thoughts come unbidden,

hammering inside the physicist’s head: ‘I can’t do this. I haven’t done enough experiments. I haven’t got enough data. I can’t write the paper well enough yet or give the talk.’

These aren’t the routine self-doubts of a young researcher. Murray is principal associate director for science and technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, and president of the American Physical Society. On 1 July she will become dean of Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Referring to her work, she says: “I have to tell myself this doesn’t have to be perfect.”

What Murray describes — an overwhelming sense of being a fraud, a phony, of not being good enough for her job, despite much evidence to the contrary — was first identified more than 30 years

ago by two clinical psychologists who dubbed it the ‘impostor phenomenon’ (IP) (P. Clance and S. Imes Psychother. Theor. Res. 15, 241–247; 1978). In their paper, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes describe women who, despite reaching significant intellectual milestones ranging from advanced degrees to professional awards, cannot internalize their success or convince themselves they deserve it. “They consider themselves to be ‘impostors’,” wrote Clance and Imes. “Numerous achievements, which one might expect to provide ample objective evidence of superior intellectual functioning, do not appear to affect the impostor belief.”

Before taking up her LLNL post, Murray spent decades at Bell Laboratories and left as senior vice-president for physical sciences and wireless research. She has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals, has won a number of awards, holds two patents and has served on more than 80 national and international scientific

committees and governing boards. Yet the self-doubt still lurks. “Do I ever think I’m not qualified?” she says. “All the time.”

Not a syndromeAlthough often referred to as the ‘impostor syndrome’, the affliction is not recognized medically as a syndrome — a group of symptoms signifying a disease or the propensity to develop one. In their 1978 paper, Clance and Imes deliberately avoided using the word syndrome. “I didn’t want this to be one more way of pathologizing women,” says Clance. She and Imes initially believed the affliction affected mainly women, but later research has shown that men fall prey as well. Many people identify themselves as sufferers, but it’s a matter of debate as to whether IP is actually a distinct emotional or psychological condition. “A whole lot more has been made of this for commercial purposes than it deserves,” says Mayada Akil, medical director of the

Unmasking the impostorFeelings of inadequacy in one’s field sometimes plague even the most accomplished scientists, especially women. Karen Kaplan analyses this apparent phenomenon and its impact.

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AWAEM Guidelines & PoliciesChair: Gloria Kuhn gkuhn@med.wayne.edu Co-Chairs: Esther Choo, Sue Watts

AWAEM DevelopmentChair: Maybe You?

AwardsMentor: Michelle Biros biros001@umn.edu

E-CommunicationsChair: Stacey Poznanski stacey.poznanski@gmail.com Co-Chair: Leila GettoMentor: Gloria Kuhn

Medical School InitiativesChair: Preeti Jose-Bilowich preetijois@ufl.eduMentor: Bob Hockberger

MembershipChair: Maybe You?

Regional MentoringChair: Linda Druelinger ldruelin@medicine.bsd.uchicago.eduMentor: Kerry Broderick

ResearchChair: Marna Greenberg: mrgdo@ptd.net

SAEM Meeting InitiativesChair: Alyson McGregor amcgregormd@gmail.com

Available Committees for 2011-2012Time to get involved!If you are interested in helping with any of these committees, as a member or possibly leadership role, please e-mail the Chair so you can be included.  If you do not hear from the Chair within a week (or no Chair is listed) please contact Stephanie Abbuhl (stephane.abbuhl@uphs.upenn.edu) as sometimes messages do get lost in the cyberspace of e-mail land.

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“I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.”

Mae West

Many Photos found via Google Images. For a list of Photo Credits, please contact Stacey Poznanski, DO at stacey.poznanski@gmail.com