Caitlin Whyte (Host): Welcome to Healing Heroes PDX, the podcast series from the specialists at Shriners Children's Portland. Today, we are discussing women in Medicine with Dr. Ellen Raney.
Well, Doctor, we are so happy to have you on the show today discussing such an important topic, women in Medicine. So to start us off, give us a bit of an introduction. Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to work at Shriners Children's Portland?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm glad to be here today. And this is a topic about which I'm quite passionate. So, let's see, I started my career at Tulane. I actually graduated from, Newcomb College when there still was one, and then Tulane University Medical School and Orthopedic Residency. And how I came to do pediatrics and work at the Shrine is closely tied because I did my Orthopedic residency thinking I was going to go into Sports Medicine like so many people do, but when I did my term in Pediatrics, we call them rotations, is sort of six months of Pediatric Orthopedics, I did that at the Shriners, at the time it was called the Shriners Hospital in Tampa, and I really fell in love with Pediatric Orthopedics as a subspecialty, and just really, really enjoyed it, so much so that I wanted to go back. So as soon as I finished my Orthopedic training at Tulane, I went back to the Shriners Hospital of Portland as a fellow. So, that means I did an extra year after my five years of Orthopedics, I did one-year fellowship specializing in children's orthopedics, and just totally loved it. So, I stayed there for a few years. And then, there was an opening at a little bit of a higher level at the Shriner's Hospital in Honolulu. So, I went there to be the Assistant Chief of Staff and then became the Chief of Staff. And then, after a while, I decided to move back to the mainland and there was an opening here at Portland. So, I moved here. And then, recently, the name was changed from Shriners Hospital to just Shriners Children's. So, that explains why I sometimes use the other one.
Host: Well, thank you for that. That is quite the journey up and down, I guess I'd say the West Coast, but then also into Hawaii, the West Side of America.
Dr. Ellen Raney: Right.
Host: Well, you mentioned how much you loved working in pediatric orthopedics when you first started. What inspired you to really keep going? Can you tell us more about that?
Dr. Ellen Raney: It really is the children in short. The children are so amazing. And in watching the children develop their full potential and be everything they can, it's just nothing slows them down. So if you took an adult and gave them some of the physical issues of the children that I care for, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. If I, say, suddenly didn't have a hand anymore, I just wouldn't know what to do with myself. But if you have a child who's born without a hand, they're amazing, it doesn't slow them down at all. Just whatever. And then, I take care of so many other children with different medical issues and just watching them evolve and grow has just been so rewarding.
Host: Oh, I love that. What have been some highlights or most rewarding parts of your career so far?
Dr. Ellen Raney: There's just so many special children. And, you know, some of them have come back to me later and say that they want to be doctors or some of them have just developed into their own people. I even have a couple that have gone into media and some that have become attorneys and doctors, doing different things. So, it's always fun to reunite with them. And just the things they could do when I first was in training, back in the day, there was no such thing as limitation of work hours, so we would work all through the weekend. And sometimes if there wasn't much going on, I might just hang out with the kids. And I remember a young woman who was born without hands, and we played video games together, and she would beat me and anybody in the hospital with her feet, and that really inspiring to me. And then, a young man who unfortunately, through disease, had lost both of his legs and both of his hands, and he would play pool with holding the pool cue in one elbow and aiming it with his residual arm on the other side. And I've never been a pool player, but I watched him play pool against everybody in the hospital. He never lost a game. It was very impressive stuff.
Host: Oh, my goodness. That is incredible. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. Well, the topic of our episode here today is women in medicine and healthcare. So, what would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you faced as a female surgeon, and then how did you navigate them?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Well, it's very interesting. I mean, so medical school now is just over half women graduates. But Surgery and Orthopedics in particular, a lot of women have not gone into it. So, Orthopedics in the United States is still just below 8% women. People in training, like the residency that I talked about, we're now, this year, the first year we're up to 20%. But in order to be equal in orthopedics, it's going to take at this rate about 200 years.
Host: Oh, gosh.
Dr. Ellen Raney: Yeah. And we have found that people tend to relate to doctors well, if you feel the doctors have more shared life experience, right? So if the doctor is your same gender or your same race or ethnicity, it can often be easier to relate to a doctor than you're more likely to follow their recommendations, and people tend to have better outcomes for treatment. In the long game, what we're trying to do here is work on healthcare disparities so that every person can expect to receive the same level of health care.
So, the biggest challenges is when I was in training, it was still an era where people didn't think women should even be in Orthopedics. So now, we're the minority, but people are more accepting. But at the time, they didn't even want women there at all. So, it was hard to really focus on learning and studying and the things I should have been studying at the time I was so busy just proving myself. So, I believe I overcame that for the most part by just working harder than everybody else. But the program that I was training in was, there was more emphasis on doing and maybe less emphasis on studying. So, I would have liked to have spent more time with my nose in books rather than the physical stuff or the logistical stuff that we had to cope with back then.
Host: Well, that again leads me right into my next question perfectly. What are those changes or improvements that you would like to see in the medical field, or even more specifically in Orthopedics, to better support women?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Well, I think, you know, we need to reach a critical mass. It's thought in systems that if your subgroup, whatever it is, whether it's women or people of color or whichever group, if you can get up to about 30%, then the tide sort of changes. And then, when we have several women in a program here, then there's not as much pressure on each person to be like, you know, they've never seen a woman resident before, so you have to be this outstanding individual. You could just focus more on your learning. So, I would like for us to reach that mass and have better mentors, better people, senior people that you can work with. So, you know, if you have a female faculty member or better yet, several female faculty members, then what you're doing is not so unique.
Host: Gotcha. Well, was there someone in your early career who really encouraged you or made a big impact on your career path?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Early, early on in my career, there wasn't anybody who was especially helpful to be a mentor to a young woman. It was much more, you had to sort of prove yourself to be there. But about five years into my career, I was lucky enough to meet Laura Tosi, she's in Washington, D.C., and she's been a fabulous mentor and the first person who really took an interest in me, like, "How can I support you? You're early in your career. I suspect these are the issues that you're finding and, you know, here are some solutions." And I don't think I even really knew what a mentor was until that moment. Like, wow, this is great. This is somebody who actually cares what I think and is listening. And then, from then on, it was fabulous. She was, you know, so supportive and really helped me find a path. I'm very . grateful. And I try to pay that forward, I try now to look for younger people in their career and see how I can help them.
Host: Absolutely. Well, looking towards those future doctors, what are some programs and initiatives that you're involved in to encourage young girls to pursue a career in STEM and Orthopedics?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Well, the Ruth Jackson Orthopedic Society has really been wonderful for me. That is named for Ruth Jackson, who was the first woman in the United States to become board certifie- in Orthopedic Surgery. And the organization was initially started as a support group for other women in Orthopedics, and it's really expanded to now help, you know, the orthopedic care of women and advance the orthopedic care. So, it's really become a phenomenal organization that focuses both on early career and people in training as well as people further along in their career.
And then, the second one is called the Perry Initiative, who's named for Jackie Perry, who is also a very famous early woman orthopedist. And in honor of her, it's a fun program where we reach out to high school students, both in engineering, it was started by an engineer and an orthopedic surgeon. And we reach out to high school students to interest them in STEM careers. So, they come, usually we set aside a Saturday and the engineers and the orthopedic surgeons get together and we meet with all these students and we give them some insight into our careers. And then, we let them spend the day with tools. So, the engineers can explain how they built the tools and how the tools are helping people. And women in engineering is, you know, hard field as well. And then, we can introduce the girls to working with model bones with power tools. So a lot of young women have actually never a drill before. You know, we get them using drills and saws, and they're surrounded meanwhile by all these successful women. So, we have the example and then some hands on exposure to them, and trying to reach them early while they're still in high school, so they can understand that this can be a career, because you really do have to start your STEM career early. You have to be thinking about what courses you take in college and what next steps are for you.
Host: Absolutely. Well, that sounds like some really cool stuff going on. And as we wrap up here today, doctor, what advice would you give to young women who aspire careers in science and medicine?
Dr. Ellen Raney: Well, thank you for that. I think that's a really good question. You know, there's so many facets. But one of the best things would be to think about confidence. We're surrounded by so many naysayers, you know, so many people who are saying women can't do this, and women can't do that, and eventually reach a point where the voices are inside you too, you know, where we have the naysayers on the inside and outside. So, I think that we have to learn to tune out the doubts from other people, but also to tune out the doubts from within ourselves, you know, when we think we can't do this. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You can do this. You can learn this. We can develop this skill. We can learn to do this. And I think when we learn to focus on what we can do instead of what we can't do, I think that'll be a big advancement for everybody, but especially women tend to need that more.
Host: Beautiful. Well, just some great work and insight today, Dr. Raney. Thank you so much for joining us. And that concludes this episode of Healing Heroes PDX with Shriners Children's Portland. Head on over to our website at shrinersportland.org. And thank you for listening.
