Northwestern Medicine partnered with The Perry Initiative to host a forum Feb. 28-29 that aimed to inspire more women to join the field of orthopedic surgery.
The forum was held at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and featured panels of female orthopedic surgeons, who spoke about issues in the field and their personal experiences in the specialty. Students also had a chance to try orthopedic procedure simulations.
Only 6 percent of orthopedic surgeons are women, making it the least gender diverse-specialty in medicine. By contrast, 42 percent of all physicians are female, and 60 percent of physicians under age 35 are female.
The forum was hosted with The Perry Initiative, which was launched in 2009 to grow the pipeline of women in engineering and orthopedics. It was named after Jacquelin Perry, MD, one of the first 10 female orthopedic surgeons in the U.S. The Perry Initiative has held more than 400 outreach events over the past decade.
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