So for the past 2 days I have been at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) conference in New Orleans, LA. The reason for me being there was because on this past Thursday the J. R. Gladden Society (JRGOS) had their annual luncheon, which always takes place on the Thursday of the AAOS meeting. The JRGOS got its name from Dr. J.R. Gladden who was the first black board certified orthopaedic surgeon in the United States. Dr. Gladden actually just recently passed away, showing that unfortunately blacks only recently have been able to break into the field of orthopaedic surgery. So yeah, that’s the background, now back to my trip.
So I left Cali this past Wednesday and didn’t arrive into New Orleans until midnight of Thursday. Because I couldn’t check into my hotel yet I called my orthopaedic mentor who is based in Riverside, CA and he said I could stay with him for the night. He happened to be staying at the Ritz Carlton downtown and I was absolutely blown away by how nice the hotel was. Everything looked vintage and expensive. My mentor was actually staying in the clubhouse of the hotel which is a segregated part of the hotel with extra amenities. The clubhouse section was like a lush living area with 2 living rooms, a dining room with a long dining table that was always filled with gourmet food and wine, and a business office with high bookshelves and lush leather couches. I was only sleeping on a cot in my mentors room, but it was the most comfortable cot I have ever slept on. Overall, when I make it, I would love to frequent the Ritz Carlton wherever I go if its anything like the one in New Orleans.
So the first event was the Annual Luncheon which took place at the Hilton Riverside hotel. The place was packed with minority orthpaedic surgeons from all over the country and the 60 minority medical students who attended. There were a lot of speakers and presentations of various programs but one presentation in particular stuck with me…it was from the President of the Caribbean Orthopaedic Society. The doctor told us a lot of things about what its like to practice in the Caribbean, the common and rare conditions that they treat, their access to medical supplies, and to me, most importantly the ratio of the orthopaedic surgeons to the population in each island. The ratios were quite terrible with some islands only have 1 orthopedic surgeon! The presentation really made me realize that there are so many missions fields out there and that I don’t need to go to India or Africa to serve God. I mean I still want to go to India or Africa, but many islands in the Caribbean need just as much help. Another highlight of the meeting was Dr. Zuckerman who was the current AAOS president, and a big shot attending at NYU. He gave a really nice speech to us about how committed the AAOS was to diversity in orthopaedics. He made some jokes about how when he was a 4thyear medical student doing is Sub-I, the residents told him that if he matched at their program he would be their token Jew, lol. He told us the story to highlight the fact that orthopaedic surgery has a lot of “token” people, with minorities and women still struggling to get a good foothold into the field. He also mentioned how he gave the Charles Epps lecture at Howard University, and that he was so impressed and honored to give the lecture that he’s has made sure that every AAOS president after him will make it a point to give a lecture at Howard University each year. I thought that was a pretty big deal and a good indicator that the AAOS sees that something needs to be done.
After the luncheon it was mingle and greet time and I got a chance to talk with a bunch of attendings from across the country. Most importantly I got to hook up with a couple of attendings at Howard and Johns Hopkins and get their contact info. During this mingling session I really noticed how most of the minority orthopaedic attendings there had done their residency at Howard University or Drew/MLK Hospital in Cali. And now that the program at MLK has been shut down, truly Howard University was and is the main place a minority can go to get trained in orthopaedics. This blew my mind because it almost harkened back to the days where the only place that black college students could go for medical school was Howard University, Meharry, or Drew. Of course there were certainly attendings who blazed the trail and were the first blacks to do their residency at various programs across the country, but for the most part most of the docs came from Howard.
Once the mingle and greet time was over they had mock interview sessions using residents and attendings as the interviewers. I didn’t really prepare for this and I realized how much I really need to start working on my interview answers. They asked me pretty standard stuff like whats my greatest strength/weakness, what would others say is my weakness, what is my greatest challenge, etc. And I truly had a hard time thinking of answers to these on the fly. But I will definitely work on it. After the mock interviews an attending from Hopkins gave us a lecture on how to excel during our Sub-I’s and as a resident. Overall I learned a lot of good stuff and I hope I can really hit the ground running when I start my away rotations.
After that session, there was a little meet and greet time where we got to spend a lot more individual time with residents and attendings and my eyes were truly opened to how vigilant I need to be on my sub-I’s and as a resident. I learned that I will be constantly getting evalulated by people who think that I’m probably not smart enough to actually get into ortho and if I do get in, actually do ortho. Because of that many might be looking for a reason to let me go as a resident. I heard plenty of stories of minority residents being let go anywhere from their chief year to their intern year. Now no one knows if minorities are let go at a higher rate than non-minorities, but according to the residents, it sure does feel that way. I also learned that I will really need to be vigilant on my away rotations and not let gunner students that are also rotating get an upper hand. One resident told me of an instance where one of the minority students on an away rotation was told by another student rotating that the resident said they could go home. And of course the minority student went home, while the other student stayed back and scrubbed in on more cases with the residents and attendings. Gunner medical students will do crafty stuff like that. So basically I learned to not go home until I hear it from my resident’s lips themselves, and then even then I’m going to offer to help out with anything else if possible. I refuse to play the game and do that to someone else, and I sure as heck refuse to let it be done to me.
Later that night all the medstudents went down to Bourbon St. I have never seen such a crazy, sinful place like that. Lol, I can’t go back there again unless I am not married and I have renounced God. I think only then could I enjoy Bourbon St. for what its there for. It was basically like a 2-mile bar with gentlemen’s clubs mixed in between. And the gentlemen’s clubs were quite different because here, the dancers would actually come into the door and start dancing, enticing men to enter. I didn’t go in, but I must confess that I couldn’t avert my eyes, lol.
The next morning was the Triology Breakfast where basically the JRGOS, Ruth Jackson Society (ortho women’s group), and the AAOS diversity board met to encourage the students even more. I got a lot of good info from everything that was said. Like I said before there were about 60 medical students there thanks to a travel grant from Nth Dimensions, and I kind of felt like the odd one there since like 85% of the students were either from Howard, Morehouse, or Meharry, and the rest were from east coast medical schools. So a lot of these students already knew a lot of the attendings and for the most part knew each other. But I didn’t let that fact keep me from networking as well as I could, especially with the other medical students because they will be my colleagues in the future. But once again I think it highlights that truly its hard to get into orthopaedics as a minority unless you are from a minority school.
So overall I had an amazing time, and I would definitely encourage any students who might even be remotely interested in orthopaedics to make it to this meeting because it is so informative and inspiring. I left with emails of people who are genuinely interested in me succeeding, and I truly believe that with a lot of hard work, the help of these attendings and residents, and God, I can match into orthopaedic surgery next year.
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