Wellness Front and Center at the SGO Annual Meeting | Kate Mills, MD
The SGO Annual Meeting spanned March 15-18 this year in San Diego, California. It was an exciting conference with awe-inspiring science presented by everyone from students to seasoned faculty. Wellness also took center stage this year!
Presidential Invited Speaker supported by the Wellness Committee and N.E.D., Erin Diehl, taught us how to reframe our thinking and move from a “fear of failure” to embracing what failure can teach us. I loved seeing everyone moving, cheering, and engaging with others during the session. I think I was most impressed by hearing people actively reframing failures even that same day! I am a big fan of “concrete wellness” and this felt like messaging I could get behind, something that I could actually do in my day to day, very chaotic life. As a recovering perfectionist (as I am sure many are!), her strategy to redefine failure and #Failfluence your way to success feels like ways I can change my perception of negativity surrounding failures and turn them into accomplishments. So, to all my friends out there, don’t forget to fail frequently (Fail, Yeah!).
Athletes Missy West and Colleen Healy (and if you know me personally, you know how I fan-girl over athletes, especially female athletes!) taught us how to manage our “inner critic” and welcome and engage new members of a group. This message hit home when I realized I have come full circle in this way. I remember such imposter syndrome when I was a third year resident—I didn’t feel like I was “in the club” at SGO. I wanted to be; it was my greatest dream, but with interviews still coming up I had no idea where my career might take me when I attended SGO in 2015 in Chicago. I matched at WashU for fellowship later that fall and still remember how different SGO 2016 in San Diego felt to me. I was finally a member and it finally felt real, and everyone welcomed me in.
Coming back to San Diego this year as an attending now felt surreal. I haven’t forgotten what my match year felt like, and walking down Gaslamp and wandering around the convention center this year brought back these memories. This year, I intentionally worked to create that feeling of belonging with newer members because of how much this meant to me. It was exciting to wander around the exhibit hall and meet all the residents applying this year or in the future. I recognized the guarded, but eager and hopeful faces that I think we all had before our match years. Their exuberance for our field reminds me of one really powerful reason I do this job, which is to help train the future generation of gyn oncologists and cultivate their skills, knowledge and love for our field and patients. There is nothing that helps me feel so well as this. They give me a hope for a better future for our patients and our specialty.
As I danced around the Nova stage at the social event with my fellowship class and the many colleagues I have met along the journey to where I am now, I was reminded of how lucky I am—so lucky to be in this club (literally, at that moment) of wonderful, passionate and smart doctors, nurses, APPs, pharmacists and more who all want the same thing—the best care for patients with gyn cancer and the best quality of life for each other. Stay well, friends, and see you all at Annual Meeting next year in Seattle!
Kate Mills, MD, is a Gynecologic Oncologist at the University of Chicago in Chicago, IL.