At the time, they thought they were just making their way in a challenging field - medicine - instead of making history. But looking back over challenges they faced - and with the wisdom of hindsight - many senior women physicians believe they have stories worth telling.

Physicians, some retired, some close to it, have shared recollections of medical school, residency and careers as part of "The Only Woman in the Room," a project begun to record stories of women doctors who entered practice in the Wichita area. In sessions during fall 2016, about 15 doctors gathered to tell their stories for the project co-sponsored by KU School of Medicine-Wichita and the Medical Society of Sedgwick County.

Thanks to a grant from the American Medical Association (AMA) and a partnership with the Kansas Medical Society (KMS), the project is going statewide. The statewide effort will be supported by $8,000 received through the AMA's Joan F. Giambalvo Fund for the Advancement of Women grant program, which funds research related to women in the medical profession. Anne Walling, MB, ChB, FFPHM, professor emerita at the Wichita campus, wrote the grant request along with Kim Templeton, M.D., professor in the orthopaedic surgery department in Kansas City.

The goal is to present the research to the AMA, ideally by summer 2018, and to fill a major gap, said Kari Nilsen, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine in Wichita. Although there's plenty of research involving male doctors and retirement, there's "nothing about female physicians" and the challenges they faced. 

The KMS partnership involves helping identify and contact women physicians over age 55. A survey will cover five key areas - finances, life satisfaction on personal and work levels, treatment by colleagues, work-life balance and retirement - and allow participants to expand on answers. The researchers will also organize four or five story-gathering sessions across the state.

Walling, Marilee McBoyle, M.D., and Connie Marsh, M.D., started out with the intent of learning more about the challenges faced by senior women physicians, including transitions to retirement and new caretaker responsibilities, such as caring for elderly parents. But their discussions evolved into ones about the experiences of life as a woman physician. The result was "we went from focusing on problems to enjoying stories and from research to an oral history project," Walling said.

At the 2016 sessions, physicians' experiences were as varied as their specialties. Some described supportive parents who believed medical school was an "awesome" choice while others were pressured to choose nursing or avoid the "hassle" of becoming a physician.  Once in medical school, some faculty members were welcoming, but several recalled professors pointedly declaring women had "taken a man's spot."

Some participants recalled nurses who became close friends, whereas senior nurses had been known to insist that all women wore dresses instead of scrubs, and denied women access to lockers and places to change. Experiences with male colleagues ran the gamut from supportive colleagues and mentors to individuals who actively attempted to remove women from residency training.

One physician recalled her mother thinking medical school "inappropriate," while her father thought she should try. Another's parents were not supportive, "probably because they were aware of the hassle I would endure - and they were absolutely right." In medical school, she was one of two women among a class of 100 - "it was pretty lonely."

Many experienced challenges in being accepted for medical school and more than half recalled a quota for women - usually about 10 percent. One participant said, "I never had any kind of discrimination until I got to interviews for medical school."

One observation among the doctors was how training locations - the coasts vs. the heartland - and just a few years may have notably affected experiences. Relatively quickly during the 1960s and '70s, female students went from two percent of classes to a quarter or third, and that shaped how things went.

Still, recollections of lecture slides featuring Playboy models cut across time and location. One doctor recalled a workbook featuring a nude woman on the cover.

"I went home and made 100 paper dresses" to put on the covers, she said. "The married men kept them on; the unmarried men ripped them off." Amid the laughter that story brought, another doctor recalled a reality of the time, "If you said something, you were uptight. You couldn't take a joke."

Although some male physicians weren't welcoming - or at least had to be won over - others "helped us progress in this community," one doctor said. One physician, trained in the 1960s, recalled male residents policing a boorish fellow doctor who had tried, unsuccessfully, to shock her by parading naked in a changing room. "It never happened again," she said. Another doctor recalled a veteran male surgeon learning that she had been wearing two sets of scrubs, because she didn't have a changing room. He took up the cause, putting an end to that "crap."

One younger retiree, hearing stories from colleagues who had helped clear a path for her, shared, "I remember you two because you were in a man's world and doing so well."

Those 2016 sessions led to an event last year on the Wichita campus called "Trailblazers: Senior Women Clinicians of Wichita." The Aug. 8, 2017, gathering was held by Wichita Women in Health Professions, a group formed at the KU campus to spur networking, mentoring and professional development.

Patricia Wyatt-Harris, M.D., a 1981 Wichita graduate, and Laura Knight, M.D., were on a panel with a physician assistant and a dentist. It was an opportunity "to learn about all who walked before," said Nancy Davis, Ph.D., assistant dean of faculty development at KU School of Medicine-Wichita.

Panelists told of wearing high heels and dresses instead of scrubs and how male doctors who tossed surgical instruments were tolerated while women were called out for such behavior. They remembered how every Continuing Medical Education event had a "wives' program" teaching skills like gift wrapping.

Wyatt-Harris, the first woman to go through Wichita's OB-GYN residency married and pregnant, said, "I guess I was the first of a lot of things, but I don't think of it like that ... I just worked as hard as everybody else did and let that speak for itself."

When interviewing for residency, administrators asked if she was going to have babies - "they were really worried about that." Once pregnant, she had to use sick and vacation time to cover maternity leave, since there was none at the time. The next year was harder than pregnancy, because she had very little time off.

Wyatt-Harris now focuses just on gynecology and is a certified menopause practitioner, interjecting "because I'm menopausal!" to much laughter. 

McBoyle, one of the project's initial organizers, graduated from KU School of Medicine-Wichita in 1977, followed by a general surgery residency in Wichita and then a trauma and burn fellowship. She was the first female surgery resident at what's now Via Christi-St. Francis and the first board-certified female surgeon in the state, she notes. Now medical director of Via Christi Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Therapy Center, she also is a KU clinical associate professor.

"I think we always learn and are inspired by one another," McBoyle said of the value of the project and the stories collected. "Some of it I've lived through, and I loved hearing from others as well."

McBoyle said she confronted challenges such as a lack of changing rooms and dedicated places for female residents to sleep, but didn't face outright discrimination. Early on, she said, she chose to approach work by being positive and persistent and with the belief things would change over time, as they did.

She recalled an older surgeon muttering about what the world was coming to if women were performing surgery. "That's a problem," she recalled telling him and smiling. "I just don't know what we're going to do about that ..."

Learn more

If you would like to learn more about or participate in The Only Woman in the Room project, contact Kari Nilsen at KU School of Medicine-Wichita at 316-293-1894 or knilsen@kumc.edu.

Note: Portions of this article appeared in newsletters of the Medical Society of Sedgwick County, and is used with the Medical Society's permission.