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Students Spend Day Learning About Orthopedics
Alexandra Lin ’19 and McKenzie Roller ’20, who are both interested in orthopedics and medical engineering, attended the Perry Outreach Program at Yale April 7.
The daylong program provided an opportunity for female high school students to experience mock orthopedic surgeries, speak and work with medical students, and hear from female orthopedic surgeons and engineers. The program was created in 2009 to encourage more women to enter these fields; currently only about 7 percent of orthopedic surgeons and engineers are women. At the present time, the Perry Outreach Program runs 40 one-day programs nationwide and, during its history, has reached more than 7,500 high school students.
“The people we heard from that day were inspiring, and the amount of information I learned — from medicine to life skills in general — was like nothing I had experienced before,” said McKenzie. “We got to do six mock surgeries, including correcting scoliosis and repairing an ACL/PCL knee injury. No other program provides an experience quite like this that is geared toward girls and connects you with such a large network of other women who are willing to help you through big career decisions in the future. I would highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in any STEM topics.”
“Attending the program was enlightening and exceeded my expectations in all aspects,” said Alexandra. “Going into the program, my only focus was to figure out if the STEM field was right for me and to make a couple friends while doing so. However, I was given so much more. Not only was I provided with insight into the STEM field, I also felt empowered by the volunteers and speakers at the program to be who I wanted to be with no pressure to follow their paths. We met women who were in various stages of coming into STEM fields, either as undergraduates, medical students or residents, and heard from accomplished female engineers and orthopedic surgeons about their own processes of coming into their professions. We even heard from one of the co-founders of the program, Dr. Jenni Buckley. We discussed the importance of diversity of opinions within the male-dominated fields of engineering and orthopedic surgery. A nonprofit organization like this that connects women to empower them and encourages a diversity of opinions truly inspired me and the other participants. I highly recommend attending this program, even if you do not know if you want to be in STEM, just for the experience of being with women passionate about their jobs and for the strong support system they provide as you begin to think about future career paths.”
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