I think abuse and mistreatment is something that's so universal in training, like medical training for medical students, residents, surgical training fellows, and it almost never gets talked about. Welcome to FemMD. Real talk for women who are balancing careers, ambition, and the chaos that comes with it all. Today's episode is brought to you by Hippocratic Collective. Check out our shows and content@hippocratic-collusive.com Becoming a surgeon is, like, a really big thing.
You have to be coached along the way. Your attending surgeon is there to make you better. And whether or not they say it nicely or meanly, that's, you know, in a sense, their job. And if I look back to my career as a gymnast, there were a lot of days when your coach would push and push and push and push you. That was their job. It's not like rainbows, butterflies, lollipops all the time. It's you have to have a surgeon that's going to push you to be the best you can.
You have to have a coach that's going to push you to be the best that you can. And I think there's a really fine line between, like, what's a good coach and what's an abusive coach? And I think that brings up the question, what is abuse and how much should we tolerate? I've experienced a lot of abuse and mistreatment during my training. I would say the two most memorable were once in medical school and then kind of my whole fellowship experience.
There are a lot of smaller incidents along the way, but those were the two that stand out. There was a specific incident in medical school where I was working with a trauma surgeon. So we were on rounds. We were in the surgical icu. Rounds are when the big group of doctors go around and talk about the different patients and kind of review the overnight events.
We talk about what things we should do today, what labs we should get, what imaging we should get, if the patient should stay in the ICU or move to a different level of care. And medical students often present all that information. And, like, it's kind of like our practice run into being like a real doctor. So I had a patient that that day, and we're in a group of, like, you know, a handful of people, like six or seven people.
And I'm giving this presentation on this patient, and I said, you know, overnight events where this, this, and this. The nurse said this, like, his lab show this, his EKG shows this, whatever. And I said, I think today we should start feeding him entirely, like, start. Start putting nutrition down his Feeding tube into his gut to try to start getting him healed. Next steps. And we had this like big rolling table that we'd move along to different rooms.
And we were standing on opposite sides of the table. The, the big boss, attending surgeon, the trauma surgeon. And then me and the, the group of people were kind of around us. And he was like, lean forward here, come here. What did you say? And I said, I think we should start feeding him today. And he goes, come here. He, he keeps like nudging me closer. I think I'm gonna like, get something like a little whisper of like, good job. He actually physically slapped me.
I know that sounds insane and you might not believe me, but he physically slapped me in front of a group. This like 6 foot 2 man slapped this 5 foot 4 female. And I decided that day, I won't tolerate a man abusing me. I'll never let that happen again. It was like crickets. And then we just moved on to the next patient. No one acknowledged anything that happened. Personality wise, I'm a challenger. I'm not afraid of confrontation. I stand for truth and authenticity and transparency.
Like, those are my core values. I go to his office, knock on the door, he's there. And I just simply said, like, sir, you crossed a line today when you hit me. I don't want you to do that again. And he was like, okay, thanks for letting me know. He's genuinely apologetic. And maybe the slap was like, maybe he thought it was like funny or something. So we chitty chatted for like 10 minutes. I left and I felt like, really good. I'm like, man, I'm proud of myself for like standing up for myself.
The next day was a Saturday, so we show up for rounds. I'm presenting a patient, and the same surgeon was in charge that day. And he starts describing a wound. He said, this wound on this patient here that we're going to go see. It's so big, the wound is so large that you could take Lauren here. And he pointed at me, by the way, I was the only female there that day. You could strip her down naked, dip her in body paint, pick her up and put her in the wound.
And I'm standing there thinking, like, okay, all these men are picturing me naked. What, what the hell does that have to do with patient care and learning? Oh, oh, I see. He is asserting his power right now. He's telling me he's still much, much higher above me on the hierarchical, you know, totem pole that medicine is okay. His sincere apology last night didn't mean anything. He just is an asshole. That's who he is. And I'll just stay quiet.
I think abuse and mistreatment is something that's so universal in training for medical students, residents, surgical training fellows, and it almost never gets talked about. And I think that's for a couple reasons. One is that it's like grossly expected. Like that's. That's bad to say, but most people expect to be a little bit abused or pimped or humiliated during medical school, because that's just like the culture of it. The pinnacle of your surgical training is often your fellowship.
It's not something that's necessarily required to surgeons. So for those of us that decided to do a fellowship, it's like the very precipice of everything you've been working towards for the last several years. You have the goal of climbing Everest, and you put in years and months and days of gritty training. You have all this back work in terms of getting your equipment right, doing all the research and preparation, doing all the weather, planning.
You know, getting to Everest is this huge accomplishment. And the very last 12 hours of your climb to the very, very peak is tiny in comparison to all the work that goes into it up front. But that's very analogous to fellowship. You have done all of these years of college, medical school, residency, and then the fellowship is the very last little tippy top of the mountain.
And it's wild to think that that very last part of your climb, once you get to the top, it's nothing like what you've imagined for the last several years working up to that point. And that's what happened to me. I got two steps away from the very top of the mountain and I quit. I looked around and I said, this is not what I want. And I decided to quit my fellowship without taking the last two steps to the very tippy top. I turned around and went back down the hill.
So every fellowship for facial plastic surgery is slightly different. Some are small and intimate, which is what I wanted. I wanted a good representation of a solo surgeon practice with some room for surgery, room for non surgical stuff. I didn't want to be affiliated with this giant hospital, a big part of a big academic department. And so those are really the only fellowships I applied for. The fellowship where I landed was a very small, intimate practice.
One surgeon, one nurse practitioner who also helped run the clinic and business side of things. She happened to be married to the surgeon, their husband, wife, duo. And they had a handful of employees, their own clinic, their own surgery center. It was an exact replica of what I planned to build. So it was, it was perfect. Everything was just like it should be. So on the interview trail, these are your, like, your mentors. You're looking up to them. You want to match a position there.
You're basically on a one full day interview. And one thing that I noticed during my interview, albeit I had rose colored glasses on, so I didn't quite see it as clearly as I probably should have, was the bad behavior from the boss or the attending surgeon to the fellow or the training surgeon. And it was a form of public humiliation, A nasty comment in front of a bunch of people. And I thought, hmm, that's weird. He must suck.
So I'm glad I'm a great surgeon and I won't ever have poor behavior directed at me. I would say the dynamic really changed when I started asking questions. I think, you know, if you've ever started a new job, the first, like, bit of time you're there, I was trying to, like, absorb information as, like, a sponge. Just the basic stuff, like, when does everybody show up? What are the roles of each person in this office?
But then after about a week, you get that down and I started to ask questions like, why are you using the stitch? There's a, why do you give people antibiotics? Why are you doing this maneuver instead of that maneuver? And it really became very obvious early on, Like, I would say within the first couple weeks that I was there to simply learn by observation. I was told not to ask questions, not to criticize or critique his technique, which I was like, dude, I'm not, like, criticizing.
I'm literally just trying to learn. These are, like, the little things that make the fellowship worth it. It's much different than, like, reading in a textbook or watching a lecture or visiting someone. It sounds weird for a grown woman to say. Like, I was bullied, I was isolated from the rest of the team. But I also think, like, objectively that's what was happening.
And that was really the point where I was like, this person is such an egomaniac that they can't even tolerate me asking questions of their surgical technique. They're such an egomaniac that they don't think I should talk to anyone else in the office besides them. And during these, like, sit down, shout fests that happened, I don't remember how many, like, every couple months between him and I, he wouldn't criticize me as a clinician, a doctor, a surgeon.
He would criticize, like, me as, like, a human and a learner. But I was There to learn. You know, when I think back to, like, the little things that started accumulating, we had a group work area where, like, literally all the staff members worked together. It was like this, like, pit of little cubicles. And one day I showed up and, like, one thing was gone from my desk. Like, the phone was gone. And I was like, okay, that's weird. Showed up a few days later, and, like, the pens were gone.
And I was like, where did my phone and my pens go? And then one day I showed up and my computer was gone. And I was like, okay, is this, like, a joke or something? Like, what's going on? And then I was told that my desk was going to be upstairs, like, away from everything, completely isolated. Like, basically, like, in. By a storage closet and the men's restroom. And I was like, why?
And then the poor behavior started, the public humiliation started, the talking nasty to me in front of other people, like, begun. And I had this flashback to my interview when I saw the same behavior with a different fellow. And I thought, this is a pattern. You know, it seemed much more hurtful when it was me. I felt like they hated me. And I couldn't wrap my mind around why. I had never had a situation where I could tell someone was really, like, disgusted by me.
They couldn't stand to look at me. And I think, looking back on all of this, the dynamic really, really changed when one key incident happened. We purchase land to build my office that I'm sitting in today, when we actually bought the land that I was going to build my building on. And, like, we made that huge commitment. And I told my fellowship director and his wife, look at this huge plot of land. It's in the perfect spot in Kansas City. I'm going to start working with an architect.
Things changed. They were like, who do you think you are? This dumb little girl? I kept saying, like, oh, no, it's really exciting. I'm going to make it work. I'm going to market myself. I'm going to build this business. Look, you guys did it. Like, you guys did it. And they kept saying it was. It was really hard. You're not going to be able to do it. It was really hard. You're not able to do it. And I'm like, well, you two are doing it. It can't be that hard.
And I asked my fellowship director and wife, like, can you guys sit down, look at these plans and give me your feedback and just instant shutdown. Like, I'm not going to look at that. No, like, you're Here to learn for fellowship. You're. You're not here to plan your business. You're not here to grow to your career. You're just here to learn by observation, you silly little girl.
That spring, there was a moment in a hallway that made me realize that none of this was going to turn into anything that I could ever use. So I was filling out some Kansas licensure paperwork, and I needed his signature on one of the sheets of paper. And I said, hey, sir, can you sign this for me? It's xyz. And he said, I'll look at it later. So then the next day comes around, and I said, hey, sir, can I have that piece of paper that I gave to you yesterday?
I wasn't going to sign it or wasn't going to give it to me that day. I was like, why the hell aren't you signing this piece of paper? Oh, you're never going to sign it. You're never going to help me with anything. You're not going to help me learn. You're not going to help me build my business. You're not going to help me get my Kansas license. So in medical school, I tried to speak up for myself, and it didn't work right. I didn't get what I wanted.
And in fellowship, I wasn't going to let him write my story. I wasn't going to let him end it. I didn't want him to have the power. I wanted it. That's why I left. And after I left, I decided to report my whole experience very objectively, as objectively as I could, to the overseeing body, like, the accrediting body of the fellowship. So I wrote this letter, like, I just made one of the biggest decisions of my career, like, potentially career ending, if you ask some people.
And I literally, like, no one wants to follow up on this, or, like, this is a huge deal for someone to quit their fellowship. Like, you guys should be, like, investigating it. But, you know, everyone's busy with their own life, and no one wants to, like, has time to, like, do anything about any of this. So I asked more firmly the organization to look into it, do an investigation, like, look at some of the allegations I had made against him.
And it took, like, two years basically, for them to, like, even get back to me about the fact that, yes, they apparently gathered some information and. And said that there was really nothing to do about any of it. So I still just feel very, like, unsettled and somewhat rageful, somewhat confused.
No one really cares about it, you know, on their end if you're in the medical community and I tell you that I quit my fellowship, people think I'm either stupid or insane if they know what a fellowship is and what it all means. They're honestly just, like, flabbergasted when I tell them that I quit my fellowship. But once it came, I think a lot of my class was like, who is this crazy girl? Like, she quit her fellowship. Like, that's insane. Why would you do that?
That's, like, so devastating to your career. Like, she's clearly off her rocker. Does she need, like, medicated or something? Or, like, does she have a substance use disorder? Like, there's got to be more to the story besides, like, she just didn't like him and he didn't like her. And I think from a public standpoint, like, if you're not in healthcare and you don't know really what it means, the main question I get is, like, well, how are you still a doctor if you didn't complete your training?
So for some people, I think it would be considered, like, career suicide. But for me, thinking about it logically, in the United States, you do not need this little, like, stamp of approval. It doesn't change who I am as a surgeon. It doesn't. It doesn't really change anything. For a long time, I considered this a big skeleton hanging upright right in your face as you open the closet. But over time, I've come to recognize that it's not. It's just part of my story.
And we're all this one big story, and we need to open our closets. There are no skeletons in there. I hope that this helps other people. Would have been so helpful for me if I had anybody that had told the story. I look at it as a very proud decision that I made. Thanks again for tuning into Femmd. I want to remind you that the world belongs to the women who question it.