Accessibility Tools

STAT Conversation: The Whitest Medical Specialty

Every week, STAT+ subscribers get access to exclusive conversations with biotech, pharma, and health tech leaders. This week, STAT general assignment reporter and associate editorial director of events Nicholas St. Fleur will be joined by Dr. Gabriella Ode, orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine and shoulder surgery, and clinical assistant professor, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. They will be discussing Usha Lee McFarling’s recent STAT investigation, why orthopedic surgery remained the least diverse field of medicine, what it says about medicine’s future, and of course be taking your questions live.

Orthopedic surgeons pride themselves on fixing things. Can they fix their own field's lack of diversity?

Just last month, spine surgeon Shaina Lipa tweeted that she is the first Black woman orthopedic surgeon to be hired by any Harvard hospital. It was a signal event, but one long overdue, and it highlights the stunning lack of progress made to diversify American medicine’s whitest specialty: Even today, being a Black, brown, or Native American orthopedic surgeon can still mean being a "first" or an "only" in hospitals, residency programs, private practices, and faculty meetings.

The whitest specialty: As medicine strives to close its diversity gaps, one field remains a stubborn outlier

Erica Taylor has a pedigree seemingly built for orthopedic surgery. She comes from National Football League royalty — her father, Hall of Fame receiver Charley Taylor, played 13 seasons with Washington’s football team — and she has degrees from a top-notch biomedical engineering program at the University of Virginia and one of the nation's best medical schools, Duke. Spending every other childhood Sunday seeing doctors in action on gridiron sidelines, she'd wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon since she was 15.

Putting a Number on Performance: Independent Study Combines Proficiency-based Training Assessments.

The journal Arthroscopy recently published a study conducted at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) which evaluated the comparability of the traditional Arthroscopic Surgery Skills Evaluation Tool (ASSET) with the metrics-based assessments of a virtual reality simulator (the VirtaMed ArthroS™ hip module).

Gabriella Ode, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in knee, shoulder, and elbow surgery at Prisma Health, joins the AOA Podcast for a frank conversation on diversity.

Episode Topics (Part One)

  • The impact of early exposure to orthopaedics on underrepresented populations in orthopaedics
  • Roles of mentors and advocates
  • Fighting back about the misconceptions about diversity
  • Moving beyond tokenism
  • Diversity and recruitment

Air Date: August 6, 2020

Episode Topics (Part Two)

The measures that are being taken to increase diversity and inclusion in orthopaedics

  • AOA’s initiatives to bring issues to a national level
  • COVID-19’s impact on recruitment and how that impacts diversity in residency programs
  • Dr. Ode shares her advice to her younger self and gives her thoughts on how others can help create change

Air Date: August 28, 2020

Study: Coccygectomy effectively manages pain for patients with chronic coccydynia

LAS VEGAS — The pain of chronic coccydynia was effectively managed with total coccygectomy in about 70% of patients through 2-year follow-up, according to results of an observational case series study presented here.

Another 20% of the 70 patients treated with coccygectomy reported additional improvement afterwards, Gabriella Ode, MD, of Charlotte, N.C., said at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting.

Introducing Dr. Gabriella Ode, M.D.

On Saturday, Gabriella Ode will become Dr. Gabriella Ode, M.D. when she earns a medical degree from Rush Medical College at Rush University on Chicagos West Side. A native of Nigeria, Ode moved to the Chicago area at eight years old and has always had an interest in science. In 2007, she earned a bachelors degree in kinesiology with a concentration in sports medicine from the University of Virginia.

I have always had an interest in science, but during my undergraduate years I realized that I also enjoyed working with people directly, Ode told the Chicago Citizen. Medicine paired my interest in both and allowed me to counsel and advise others and have a direct impact on their lives.