Carroll hospital welcomes first female general surgeon

Carroll County (Map, News) - Carroll Hospital Center’s first female general surgeon just completed her first week here at a time when male surgeons dominate operating rooms nationwide.

Dr. Sarah Lentz, 36, a wartime doctor who treated hundreds of U.S. soldiers injured by explosives in Iraq, said working in a man’s world is nothing new to her, especially as a servicewoman in the Air Force.

“The devastation and the wounds were nothing like what you’d see here [in an American hospital],” said Lentz, who was stationed at one of the largest military field hospitals in Balad, Iraq, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, for four months this year.

While almost 50 percent of medical school students are women, only 24 percent of surgery residents are female, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Dr. Patricia Numann, a pioneering female surgeon in medical school and now a 65-year-old surgery professor at the State University of New York Medical University at Syracuse, said several factors contribute to women feeling discouraged from pursuing surgery as a career.

The long hours, only recently capped at 80 hours a week for residents, can hinder women who want to have children, and discrepancies still exist in salaries between male and female surgeons, said Numann, the self-proclaimed “grandmother of American female surgeons.”

She founded the Association of Women Surgeons, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and said that when she applied for surgical residencies 40 years ago, hospitals rejected her outright based on sex.

But over the past four decades, Numann said, women have enjoyed progress in the field of surgery, especially in the Baltimore region, where Dr. Julie Freischlag serves as director of the department of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Dr. Martha Zeiger oversees endocrine surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, positions men have typically held.

Surgeons at Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster

» Male surgeons: 126

» Female surgeons: 14

» Total: 140

Source: Carroll Hospital Center

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com

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