10 FYi • Profile
Nicola Stobbs offers an insight into her work as a surgeon and the initiative encouraging more women to follow in her footsteps
NO LONGER A MAN’S WORLD
A
S A female surgeon practising in the UK, it is safe to say I am in a minority.
The number of male consultant
surgeons stands at a whopping 90 per cent of the profession
according to 2014 figures for England, with only 10.5 per cent female. That is despite 50-60 per cent of medical school undergraduates being women. But one national initiative that I am proud to be part of hopes to change that. Women in Surgery (WinS), part of the Royal
College of Surgeons (RCS), was formally created in 2007 with a mission statement to “encourage, enable and inspire women to fulfil their surgical ambitions”. Its main aims are to raise the profile of women in surgery, encourage change in attitudes, understand the issues women face in surgery and support and provide advice to female surgeons at all levels. Good progress has already been made: when the initiative launched, the proportion of female consultant surgeons in England was just three per cent. The numbers are rising steadily and there are currently around 5,000 surgeons in the WinS network, but there is still some way to go to reach gender equality.
Ancient origins Evidence of female surgeons goes right back to ancient Egypt where wall paintings in tombs and temples from 3,500 BC show women performing surgical procedures, such as caesarean sections and the removal of cancerous breasts. There is also evidence of such practices in ancient Sumeria, Babylon, Greece and Rome. More recently, the status of the woman surgeon was limited throughout the 18th century but numbers increased in the 19th century – most notably, the Medical Act of 1876 allowed women to qualify as doctors in the UK for the first time. The first female surgeon to gain the
Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) was Eleanor Davis-Colley in 1911 but fast-forward to 1990 and there were still only 320 female fellows. Women are now represented at every level in every surgical specialty but uptake remains relatively low. The reasons for this are complex but research by the University of Exeter concluded that the paucity of women in surgery is not due to lack of ambition but due to a perceived inability to fit into the world of surgery and a lack of female role models. This is something that WinS is trying to address via events such as
their conferences, workshops and the WinS directory of surgeons who are willing to offer advice to colleagues and aspiring surgeons.
Personal journey During my undergraduate and foundation training I didn’t work with any female consultant surgeons, and although I wanted to specialise in ENT surgery from my final year of medical school I still wasn’t 100 per cent sure. I went to my first WinS meeting in 2010 as an FY2, attending their London conference, which was a great networking experience and a source of valuable advice and information. It also gave me a much-needed confidence boost and helped me decide to pursue a surgical career. From there, I took part in the WinS mentoring scheme which I found really useful: both being mentored by a surgical registrar who could give advice about applications and training, and also having two medical students to support. I have been involved in a number of events for
WinS in recent years, including a panel discussion at the Manchester Scalpel undergraduate conference and contributing to the WinS video, Surgery: No longer a man’s world, as part of International Women’s Day.
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