Navigating Your Surgical Career

The AWS Guide to Success

A career in surgery is immensely rewarding and challenging at the same time. This helpful and practical guide written by leaders in surgery is meant to inspire young surgeons and make their career journey a bit easier.

Advance Praise for
Navigating Your Surgical Career

What a resource! Bundled into one wonderfully readable package, this compendium of essays written by experienced women surgeons provides remarkably clear facts and wise advice on virtually every subject a young surgeon beginning her career should consider. While one would wish such information to be "common knowledge", this practical collection shows that there are indeed sometimes unfamiliar structures and processes governing entry to the surgical profession that all young surgeons should know. In revealing these potential obstacles, this book provides a most valuable roadmap for very important career steps and choices. Illuminated by the charming cartoons of Walter Pories MD, and witty quotes predicting the essence of each chapter, this is indeed a career resource that will serve young surgeons most effectively. Congratulations and thank you to the women surgical leaders of the AWS who crafted this fine contribution! 

Barbara Lee Bass M.D., FACS
John F., Jr. and Carolyn Bookout
Presidential Distinguished Chair and Professor of Surgery
Houston Methodist Hospital
Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University

I want to congratulate the authors on this excellent career guide. Sure wish I had something like this when I was "growing up" in surgery. Women are meant to be surgeons and leaders and this guide provides great "hands on - real world" advice.

Diana Farmer, MD, FACS, FRCS 
Pearl Stamps Stewart Professor and Chair 
Chair, Department of Surgery, UC Davis School of Medicine 

While medical school and residency prepare surgeons to understand surgical disease and its management, there is an alternative curriculum that is left untouched. This “manual” addresses these gaps such as: How does the surgeon find a job that is good for her or him? How do you go through an interview? This book provides in its short and easy-to-read chapters exquisite practical details that should be extraordinarily helpful to the surgeon. I loved the fact that all chapters have highlights on specific messages – 2 or 3 that are easily visible, easy to read and to understand. These beautiful pearls, along with the cartoons from Walter Pories, are fun and something to look for. The size of the chapters is perfect and the practical aspects described, associated occasionally with the personal story of the author (for example, the chapter on re-entry) provide details and examples useful for all surgeons. This is a great piece, a great complement to the education and training received in medical school and residency, and an excellent guide for starting a practice. It also provides for good reading at almost any time of one’s career (for example the chapter on Leadership).

Carlos A. Pellegrini, MD, FACS, FRCSI (Hon.)
The Henry N. Harkins Professor and Chair of Surgery
University of Washington 

This book of sound advice is written for women who are considering or have chosen surgery as their career. The authors, women who are surgeons, have drawn from their own experiences, those of others and scholarly review of the literature. The collection is comprehensive, clear and timeless. It is a must read for all surgeons not only women. I am confident that it will be reread often.

Courtney M. Townsend, Jr. M. D. FACS
The Robertson-Poth Distinguished Chair in General Surgery
University of Texas Medical Branch

 All proceeds will go to support the Association of Women Surgeons.