How is Emergency Medicine leading in gender equality?

When it comes to promoting gender equality, diversity, opportunity and inclusion, the CU Department of Emergency Medicine is leading the way. The department, which is within the School of Medicine, recently received the Outstanding Department Award from the Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine.

Richard Zane, MD, chair of the department, called the award “humbling” and credited his team for the accomplishment.

“This is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I like to take a lot of leadership lessons from a lot of different people and there’s almost nothing I won’t take credit for, but I can’t take credit for this,” he said. “Steve Jobs (the late CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc.), who is one of my heroes, said, ‘You don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do; you hire smart people so they tell you what to do.’ And that is exactly how this came about.”

Jennifer Wiler, MD, MBA, executive vice chair, said the Emergency Medicine department has excelled in promoting the best person for a role, “and if that happens to have gender and diversity acknowledgment, then that’s fantastic.”

The department has developed coaching and mentorship programs for all faculty, one of the key ingredients to making it a special place to work, Wiler said. Wiler is the lead author of a recent study into the gender-based salary gap among academic emergency medicine physicians.

“To Rich’s point, we have focused on building a spectacular faculty and we have a number of women who have just shined,” she said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to be able to acknowledge and develop their leadership potential in many different roles across our three mission areas, and we’re very proud of that.”

Zane and Wiler sat down for a CU Anschutz 360 podcast about the department’s innovations in the area of gender equality along with team members Becky McGowan, MBA, vice chair of finance and administration; John Kendall, MD, vice chair of education; Anne Libby, PhD, vice chair for academic affairs; Adit Ginde, MD, MPH, vice chair of research; and Kelly Bookman, MD, vice chair of operations.

Click the play button below to listen to the podcast:

Photo by Matt Kaskavitch, Office of Communications