Throughout November, ESCP promoted and shared information and insights across its network on social media on the topic of Women In Surgery. Using the hashtag #womeninsurgery on twitter, our colorectal community was encouraging to engage with each other to share ideas, thoughts, inspiration and questions around the subject.
There are a number of reasons why focusing on this as a topic is important: to show that women are still underrepresented both within ESCP and in surgery more generally, and it is important that younger female surgeons see colorectal surgery as a forward thinking, inclusive and rewarding career path.
The month was co-ordinated by Gabriela Möslein, ESCP's General Secretary and Director of the Center for Hereditary Tumors at Helios University Hospital Wuppertal in Germany, and featured contributions from a host of male and female surgeons from across Europe.
Further video contributions were shared, from Tina von Loon discussing reversal of left-sided colostomy utilizing single-port, Debby Keller and Beatriz Martin, as well as articles from the likes of Rosa María Jimènez-Rodrìguez.
We also used the opportunity to share clips of the Women in Surgery educational session from ESCP 2019 in Vienna in September.
The inspirational Samar Alhomoud, one of the first Saudi women colorectal surgeons also lent her support to our campaign and posted a video message for ESCP followers.
Our #WomenInSurgery month concluded in style, with a fantastic TweetChat with Gabriela Möslein. Chaired by Richard Brady, a number of questions on the topic were put to, and answered by, Gabriela over the course of one hour on Twitter. These ranged from questions around barriers to career promotion for aspiring female surgeons during and after their residency, whether the gender imbalance in surgery more pronounced in colorectal surgery and how unconscious gender bias in the workplace can be avoided.
The TweetChat was a huge success - thanks to those that followed and participated - we saw 700 participants and nearly 1,800 tweets!
The month was also peppered with a number of topical #MondayMotivation, #ThrowbackThursdays and #FridayFacts and to encourage discussion, critical thinking and the sharing of opinions and ideas.
Thank you to everyone who participated, shared or commented throughout November, and let’s not end the discussion here – keep those #womeninsurgery tweets coming!
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