Written by: Robert Neviaser, MD
Emeritus Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences
The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the 11th oldest medical school in the country, graduated its first woman, Clara Bliss Hinds, in 1887. It has been a favorable place for women ever since.
The story which follows is one that is not very well known in the wider Orthopaedic community. The reasons for that are probably multiple but the most obvious is that it began and grew before the age of mass communication. There was no social media, no Linkedin, no Doximity, no Facebook, etc. Additionally, those involved would now be considered old fashioned, in that they adhered to the standard of the time which frowned upon self-promotion.
There were only two occasions where the facts about women in orthopaedics were told. The first was in 2009 at the American Orthopaedic Association meeting. There was a symposium on women in orthopaedic surgery and during the discussion, Biil Levine stood and asserted “If you want to know how to recruit women into Orthopaedics, ask Bob Neviaser”. The second was an interview that I did with an AAOS newsletter about bringing women into Orthopaedics. What follows is about how a previously little-known program pioneered the bringing of women into Orthopaedic residencies when no one else was doing so. Others had had one or two women over decades, but no one had made the concerted effort to recruit women on a continuing basis until we at George Washington did starting in the early 1970s.
The GW Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, enrolled its first woman resident in 1965. When I arrived in 1971 and assumed the position of Residency Director, I wanted to make the program into a nationally recognized residency, especially in the Northeast (the Boston to Washington corridor). This was an ambitious goal as it entailed competing for residents with well-established programs of famous universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, and Cornell among others. At the time, GW Orthopaedics was an afterthought but having once been introduced during a Visiting Professorship at Harvard as an iconoclast, challenging the accepted dogma was inherent in my nature. In the first couple of years, we had some success in recruiting excellent male applicants but more often lost the battles with the famous schools. We needed to do something differently.
Like many medical schools at that time, Orthopaedic Surgery was a selective Surgical Specialty option for junior and senior students. They had to choose two of the four offered surgical specialties for a two-week rotation. Because GW had a significant number of women medical students, we had many women rotate through Orthopaedics and began to appreciate the impressive qualities of these young women, not only of their intellect, but of their dedication to patients, their compassion, and their surgical skills. We realized that since we wanted the smartest and most talented residents, women were an untapped source.
At that time, women in Orthopaedic Surgery were virtually unheard of, with only a very few since Ruth Jackson was Board certified in 1937. Other than Dr. Jackson, I knew of only Barabra Stimson, Liebe Diamond, Jacquelin Perry, Mary Sherman, and Ros Kane. Female medical students were told that Orthopaedists were “strong as an ox and twice as smart” and that women were too smart and too weak to succeed in the field. Nevertheless, many of the women enjoyed their time with us, and I was soon able to recruit Melinda Gardiner during her junior year (1973) to join our residency upon graduation. She contradicted the stereotype of the big strong, dumb Orthopaedist because she was of small stature and slender build. However, she was also very smart (elected her junior year to AOA), understood the principles of leverage, and became the first female fellow in the Hand Surgery program of the Harvard / Massachusetts General Hospital training program, with the late Richard J. Smith. Thus began our pioneering venture of bringing women into Orthopaedic Surgery.
Progress was slow but steady until I became Chair of the Department in 1987 and had free rein to bring in greater numbers of women. We were able to compete successfully with other programs for outstanding residents because they were not recruiting these outstanding women. We became known as a women friendly program, where they were treated as full equals to the men, and anything less from any faculty was not tolerated. Over my 28 years as Department Chair, more than 30% of our residents were women, compared to the national average of 3.5% in 1987 and 16.7% in 2015. Since we had only four residents per year, we usually had one or two per class, often had three per class (75%) and had four (100%) women in one class.
Selecting the women residents that we are most proud of is a monumental challenge because, with only a couple of exceptions, we are proud of all of them, as they have contributed to their communities, their patients, and their profession. Not intending to slight any one of them, I will describe those who have also made their mark by contributing to education and research.
Kathleen McHale came to us from the Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel). After completing her residency, she took a Pediatric Orthopaedic Fellowship at the Childre’s National Medical Center. Later she had a long and distinguished career in the Army, becoming the first woman to Chair an Orthopaedic Residency while at Walter Reed Medical Center and Professor at the Uniform Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS). She also had tours in Kosovo and Bosnia and served as Orthopaedic consultant to the Surgeon General of the United States. After retiring from the Army, she spent time with us at GW as an Orthopaedic Traumatologist and full Professor.
Leesa M. Galatz graduated from UC Berkley with a degree in English and then from GW Medical School. After finishing our residency, she completed a fellowship in Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania with Joe Iannotti and Gerry Williams. She then had a distinguished career at the Washington University of St. Louis, doing basic and clinical research in addition to patient care. After the administration at GW decided they could not “afford” to make her my successor as Chair, she was appointed Chair and endowed Professor at the Mt. Sinai Medical School and eventually Director of all Orthopaedics in the Mt. Sinai health system, making her the first woman to lead a Department of Orhopaedic Surgery at a major Medical School. Her accomplishments are too extensive to list in their entirety but include Kappa Delta Award recipient twice, member of the Board of Trustees of the JBJS, and numerous research grants. She could easily have been President of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons but has thus far declined to be considered, likely due to all of her other responsibilities. She continues to add insight into shoulder and elbow disorders through her basic science and clinical research. She also happens to be a champion equestrienne.
Anne M. Kelly graduated from Harvard, having captained both the field hockey and basketball teams. She then received her MD from SUNY Buffalo, magna cum Laude, interned at Yale and after completing our residency, did a Sports Medicine fellowship at UMass. She returned to her native New York to become one of the first women sports medicine specialists at the Hospital for Special Surgery. She has been a consultant to the US Olympic Training Center, is heavily involved in resident and student education, and is currently an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Cornell University Medical College.
Julie Y. Bishop graduated from Cornell University and Cornell Medical College before completing our residency. She then took the Shoulder and Elbow fellowship at Mt. Sinai with Evan Flatow. She moved to the Ohio State University Medical Center, became head of the Shoulder and Elbow Service and is a full Professor. She is currently the Secretary / Treasurer of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons. She has done and continues to do extensive shoulder research.
Robin V. West came East from California to attend Johns Hopkins University and be an outstanding swimmer for the university. After graduation she came to GW Medical School and then did her residency in our orthopaedic department. She then completed the Sports Medicine fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and remained on the faculty, soon becoming the first woman to be a team Orthopaedic Surgeon in the NFL for the Washington Commanders after being assistant team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers. She is currently the team physician for the Washington Nationals. Having been Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she came to Virginia to be Director of the INOVA Health System Sports Medicine program and is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and Georgetown.
Jill C. Flanagan was a gymnast as an undergraduate at George Washington University and then graduated from the medical school at the top of her class. After completing our Orthopaedic residency, she took a Pediatric Orthopaedic Fellowship at the Scottish Rite Children’s Center of Atlanta. She is now with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, is a Consultant to Duke University Department of Orthopaedics and is currently the President of the Limb Lengthening and Reconstruction Society.
Gudrun Mirick is a graduate of Bates College and New York Medical College. After completing our residency, she took a Trauma Fellowship at UCSF. She is currently at the Hennepin County Medical Center Trauma service and is an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Minnesota.
Danielle M Wilbur Obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Buffalo and her MD from Upstate Medical Center (Syracuse). After finishing our residency, she completed a Hand Fellowship at the Jefferson Hand Center and then returned to her native upstate New York to the University of Rochester. There she is Associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Plastic Surgery, one of the Vice Chairs of the Department, and Director of the Hand Surgery section.
Rebecca Rajfer was a registered nurse who then obtained her MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Upon completing our residency, she took a trauma fellowship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. She then went west to Loma Linda University where she is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and is actively involved in student and resident education.
Rachel Lefevbre graduated from Harvard magna cum Laude and received her MD from Albany Medical College as an AOA. She has said that during her residency interview, when she was told that the women were treated the same as the men residents, she decided on the spot that GW was where she wanted to train. She proved to be brilliant, compassionate, a skilled surgeon, and was loved by everyone from the faculty to the staff, by students and especially by patients. She took a Hand Surgery fellowship at the University of Southern California. Prior to her arrival, they had a faculty position to be filled and were considering offering it to the then fellow. The chair contacted one of our faculty whom he knew to confirm that she was as good as her recommendations from us, and when reassured that she was, held the faculty position open for her until she finished the year. She more than lived up to her billing and was an Assistant Professor in their Department.
Lindsay Hussey-Andersen comes from an academic family. She graduated from Princeton University and received her MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. After finishing our residency, she took the Shoulder and Elbow fellowship at Mt. Sinai under Leesa Galatz and Evan Flatow. She then headed west and is now an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Loma Linda Medical School. On one occasion, when she heard me say that the women were treated the same as the men in our residency, she laughed and said “No Dr. Neviaser, that’s not true; you treat the women better than you treat the men!”.
Alice Hughes graduated from the University of Connecticut and then from Jefferson Medical College. Upon completing our residency, she took a Trauma fellowship at Allegheny Medical Center in Pittsburgh. She then joined the Orthopaedic Department of Johns Hopkins Medical School as an Assistant Professor.
Jessica Heyer graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania and obtained her MD from NYU School of Medicine. She followed that with a Pediatric Orthopaedic fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelpia (CHOP). She then returned to New York and joined the Hospital for Special Surgery as an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Cornell Medical College.
It has proven to be a wise and successful decision for GW to be the first program to recruit women to enter Orthopaedic Surgery. It is now common to have women in residencies but that was a change that took many years to achieve. By taking highly qualified women into our residency, it has led to many going into and become important contributors to the academic side of the specialty, and we are especially proud that so many of our women graduates from this pioneering program have done so and many were themselves pioneers by becoming “firsts” in a variety of positions in their careers.
