strong bonds that tended to exclude the few women on the service. Urology,
a surgical subspecialty, was a male bastion.
During my fourth year of medical school, I spent a month on the
urology service at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota.While there, I
learned about the urological problems suffered by women. I also became
aware that there were very few women urologists. No specialty within the
medical profession has fewer women practitioners than does urology. Less
than 1 percent of urologists in the United States are women.
I realized that it is a field in strong need of well-informed female physicians.
I had found my field: I would go into urology, and focus on women’s
urological problems. Ironically, the next time I dealt with urological issues
specific to women was during my fellowship at UCLA Medical Center seven
years later. During my six years of residency, I rarely treated a woman who
suffered with one of the problems discussed in this book, but not because
female patients did not have these conditions. They did, and still do. Rather,
the majority of male urologists in practice did not focus on women’s urological
conditions.
I was the second woman accepted into the urological training program
at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City in the history of the
department. The first woman completed her residency about eight years
before I began. She has never practiced urology. Upon completion of her
training, she did a second residency in pathology and became a city Medical
Examiner. I had no women role models from whom to learn. No women
attending physicians trained me, either during my clinical work or my laboratory
experience. I was the only woman in every conference and presentation,
unless one of the radiologists attended.
Because of this isolation, I became acutely aware of the difficulties that
women face when they are seen by male urologists, who traditionally treat
male problems. Of course, most physicians, urologists included, are compassionate
and interested in giving their patients excellent care. After all,
their wives and daughters are women. But most male urologists do not make
an effort to learn and understand female urological disorders.Unless special
interest is taken to think about them, little progress will be made on either
an individual or a scientific level. That is why specialty training is so important.
It is not just the experience that one gets from it, but the focus of one’s
thoughts and ideas in one specific area.
Upon completion of my chief residency year in urology, I pursued a
fellowship in pelvic surgery at UCLA, where I learned about female pelvicfloor
problems and was exposed to the creative and complicated reconstructive
surgery that can be done to correct these problems. I also realized