Deakin Surgical Interest Group (DSIG)

My passion for surgery was ignited at the end of my first year of medical school where I had a privileged opportunity to go on a study tour to Vietnam with Deakin School of Medicine. I had an eye-opening and life-changing surgical experience with the Burns and Reconstructive Department at Cho Ray Hospital. Together with my background of being an international student, I have been very passionate about global surgical health and wish to make it a focus in my leadership portpoflio.

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My journey with DSIG started in 2020 when I was elected as the Clinical Representative of DSIG. I worked closely alongside the chair at the time to organise various events, publish useful resources for our surgically inclined medical students and learn the rope of running the society as a chair. The year 2020 was different to any other year before as it was impacted heavily by COVID-19, to which our team worked relentlessly to find solutions and adapt. A few events were not able to take place in person due to restrictions, but new initiatives were born. I truly appreciate the year of hard work, as it prepared me well for the following year when I am the chair.

 

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In 2021, I was honoured to be elected as the chair of DSIG despite fierce competition with other contestants for the position. Learning from my year as the DSIG Clinical Representative, I have identified three main areas that I want to work on as the chair to lead DSIG to the next level.

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Below is a list of activities and initiatives I have led in my position as the chair of DSIG in reference to the three main areas of improvement identified. I believe these demonstrates my ability to plan, organise and implement changes as a leader for my student community.

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One key focus I had during my year as a chair was to ensure the smooth running of our Surgical Skills Workshop, where students have a fun night learning various different surgical skills with experienced surgeons. This event is our most popular event since the start of it, however, due to COVID-19, it was not able to take place in person due to restrictions in 2019. This has resulted in the first and second years (pre-clinical year medical students) having significantly lesser exposure to learning important surgical skills. This gap can have downstream effects on the student’s confidence in taking part in surgical activities later in their clinical years and beyond. Hence, it is of particular importance for us DSIG to run this event in person this year.

 

 

With careful planning and solid contingency plans, we were able to successfully host the Surgical Skills Workshop 2021 in person (see photo gallery below). Not only did we hold the event successfully, but we also increased the capacity of the event by 25% and expanded to have 5 stations rather than the normal 4 stations. Seeing all the excited faces of students performing their first suture was a very fulfilling feeling. We have also evaluated the outcome of our event and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the students. (See the attached feedback report) Based on this I believe this event has increased our student communities’ confidence in their surgical skills and their confidence in taking part in future surgical activities in their clinical years. The event is also likely to have inspired many to consider pursuing a surgical career in the future.

 

In conjunction with the skills-based event, DSIG has also prepared a “Global Surgery Week” where students will find interesting articles, podcasts and videos shared on our social media on the topic of global surgery. (See DSIG Instagram for content) I believe it is paramount for DSIG to take an active position in promoting the importance of global surgery as the gap in the access and quality of healthcare is significant between high and low-income countries. While DSIG aims to inspire and provide quality opportunities for surgically inclined students to feel empowered in pursuing a surgical pathway, we would also like to inspire these future surgeons to contribute to closing the gap in global surgical health.

 

In addition to global health, I also made it a mission to lead by example and promote diversity in surgery under my leadership. Gender inequality in the surgical field is a long-standing problem. Many female junior doctors identify that the lack of female representation and role models in the surgical field as a barrier to them entering the field despite their keen interest. Hence, this year we have started ensuring that all our events have diverse speakers in not only gender but also race to begin initiating change. As a female myself, I have been fortunate to have encounter female surgical role models that have shown me that it is possible for a female to thrive in the surgical field, hence I wish to positively influence other female medical students that are surgically inclined in the same way.

 

Compare to 2020 when I was the DSIG clinical rep, I have grown significantly in my leadership ability and style. From learning and assisting alongside the previous chair, I have grown to take charge of projects that I am passionate about. I am able to initiate, plan, organise, implement and evaluate a project from start to finish as well as using teamwork skills to delegate and allow my team members to learn different things and grow through a project. The most valuable skill I have developed through my leadership is communication skills that I believe will benefit me very much in the future. Through liaising with different surgeons, sponsors and management teams I have learnt to use emotional intelligence, sound judgement and empathy to achieve better communication. I have also learnt to better use my leadership role to advocate for positive change in areas of my passion.