Milton T. M. Little, MD, FAAOS | Molly Meadows, MD
August 30, 2024
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Congratulations! You have finally completed the long arduous journey to becoming an attending. Residency and Fellowship are now behind you and now you begin a new challenge. Unfortunately, there is no set path ahead for this portion of your journey as it is very dependent on your career aspirations and goals. While there isn’t a blueprint, there are still some simple ways to become involved in your hospital, your state medical organization, your regional orthopaedic association, your subspecialty organization, and national organizations.
1Make a Plan
Creating a 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plan is critical to helping you accomplish your future goals and determining how you would like to invest your time and energy as you begin this new phase. Whether you are starting an academic, privademic, or private job, you must think about your plan when signing up for activities. Is teaching the area you’d like to devote your time? Do you have a desire to become a division chief or department chair? Do you want to make legislative health care changes? Create a plan and revisit this plan every year and at each time point to make sure you are accomplishing your goals and appropriately investing your time. These things may change and that’s completely normal. Sometimes gaining experience helps you understand how to best maximize your career and life satisfaction.
2Nurture your relationships
At this point in your life, you have been immersed in orthopaedics for at least 7-9 years. You have developed friendships, mentors, and even mentees. Call, set up meetings, zoom, and meet for lunch/dinner regularly with your orthopaedic colleagues to discuss your goals. Learn about the good, the bad, and the novel about their hospitals. Determine if there are committees in your hospital where you can help to bring forth some of those changes if this is an area that piques your interest. Inquire about their regional, state, subspeciality, and national committee work so that you can find out how to get involved if that excites you. Discuss any leadership or educational conferences that have impacted his or her career. Attending those conferences/courses may have a tremendous influence on your future.
3Volunteer early and often
Once you’ve started to figure out your areas of interest, pay attention to your email. You will receive information about available committee positions, volunteer opportunities, and conferences that will fit into your interests and goals. Participate and make the opportunity count. Inquire about the time commitment and requirements so that you can avoid overextending yourself. Hit your deadlines and dedicate time to the activity so you can open other doors in the future. Once you have been elected to or joined a committee, it is your responsibility to chime in, participate and affect change. If they didn’t believe in you, then you wouldn’t have a position on the committee. Listen, learn, and contribute because you are there for a reason.
4Know when to “fold’em”
If you volunteer early and say yes to opportunities, then eventually you will join some activities that don’t fulfill your career goals or interests. That’s completely normal and it’s essential to learning how you would like to contribute to the advancement of orthopaedic surgery. Work hard to complete your responsibilities and maximize this experience. You are going to learn a great deal from each committee experience, each educational course, and the conferences you attend. Take those lessons and take note of them so that you can apply those experiences to other areas of interest. When you are planning to step away, provide recommendations for people who you feel could positively impact the experience. Bring others with you as you advance, just as your mentors have done for you.
As mentioned above, there is no blueprint for getting involved as a young attending, but there are steps you can make to be successful. Getting involved requires finding your interests, being proactive, completing your tasks, and helping to advance these experiences. You have done all this before, and good work begets more opportunities.
DISCLOSURES: Dr. Little Globus Medical, Consultant: Depuy Synthes, Consultant: Restor3D, Committee Member: AO Fellowship Committee; OTA Membership Committee; OTA Diversity Committee; OTA Wellness Committee. Dr. Meadows this individual reported nothing to disclose
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