Patient Information
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Holly Leshikar:
The Perry Initiative is a pretty incredible program. It was started in 2009 by one of our old colleagues, Dr. Lisa Lattanza and Dr. Jenny Buckley. What they recognized is that their two fields had fallen behind the times in terms of gender equality. When you look at orthopedic surgery, only 8% of all practicing orthopedic surgeons are female, and that's pretty incredible when you think about the fact that 50% of people going into medical school are women.
Today, we are at the UC Davis School of Nursing, partnering with our colleagues there to basically provide a hands-on day for the girls from local high schools. So they came this morning, they heard a great talk from one of our engineers who works with gait and post-stroke patients, and then they're actually in the lab right now putting on external fixators, learning how to sew on pig's feet, they're going to be putting intramedullary rods for our femur fractures. The reason that we all do this is to pay it back and to pay it forward. So none of us would be here without great mentorship, but our goal is to show women that there is this possibility in their future. I want them to look and say, "This is possible professions, these are possible fields that you can go into and find a really fulfilling and wonderful career."
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