Department of Surgery Leadership Towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The best teams—whether focused on clinical care, research, or education—are those that build an inclusive culture, foster diversity, and relentlessly pursue equity. Our patients, trainees, and colleagues deserve inclusive environments to be cared for, to learn, and to work. An academic surgical department spans the tripartite missions and thus is the responsible organizational unit through which cultural progress in surgery may be pursued. Surgical department chairs, because of the position they occupy, play a central role in leading change. Success towards the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion depends on an engaged and committed department chair. Due in no small part to the historical and ongoing systemic biases—racism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, White supremacy—that permeate our profession and all aspects of society, most surgical chairs are White males who have benefited from these systemic biases to varying extents over the course of their careers in order to arrive at the crucial leadership positions they occupy. As three cis White male surgical chairs, we believe that it is essential that we are aware of the various forms of privilege that contributed to our own professional successes. This perspective has deepened our sense of responsibility as leaders to continue to educate ourselves and work to use our privilege to help reform the systems that continue to create differential advantages for some and not others. Our goal in this article is not to center the stories of cis White males. Sharing our individual stories is less important and may provide the impression of being performative. Thus, we believe the best use of this forum is to share our experience and specific approaches as we have attempted to learn along with our own organizations. We hope these experiences will help enlist and inspire others, especially those from majority groups who occupy similar leadership positions to become more effective allies and champions for inclusion. The burden and responsibility for eliminating sexism, racism, and other forms of bias in our field cannot rest with those who have been historically excluded or discriminated against; neither can it be delegated. The goals of this article are to (1) define some basic concepts, which are also covered in more detail elsewhere in this supplement; (2) share perspectives on the minority tax, and our experiences learning while leading in the domain; and (3) provide specific examples about what we are doing in our departments.

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