Baystate Health strives to ensure that our workforce is inclusive, reflecting the diverse populations we serve. Together our strengths, experiences, and thoughtful perspectives encourage innovation throughout our health system.
Women Advancing and Achieving in Medicine (WAAM) is a Baystate Health Organizational Resource Group in the office of Diversity and Inclusion. WAAM’s mission is to contribute to the organization’s success by serving as a resource that influences and fosters a dynamic and inclusive work environment for team members, ultimately impacting the care patients receive. Our goals are to promote academic and leadership advancement of women providers, to optimize the recruitment and retention of diverse talent and to ensure that female providers have access to effective mentors and opportunities for skill development.
WAAM was started in September in 2005 and became an organizational resource group in 2015. The group works closely with the Office of Faculty Affairs and we sponsor events throughout the year to promote networking and mentorship as well as academic and leadership advancement. Over the last 5 years our Learn from Leaders Series has allowed us to learn from Baystate Leaders including Nancy Shendell-Falik, Dr. Andrew Artenstein, Dr. Charlotte Boney, and Betty Larue, among others.
Anne Perschel, PsyD, Excutive Coach from Germaine Coaching and Consulting, led a 6 week program, Navigating a Path to Success for Women in Medicine: A mindful approach in which we learned to use mindfulness to help address obstacles in practicing medicine as women providers.
Angela Lussier, president of the Speaker Sisterhood, led a 6 month speaker development program pilot with the aim of increasing speaking engagements at local, regional and national levels in order to promote both academic and leadership advancement. The nearly 20 participants left the program not only feeling more confident about speaking, but also with a strong support group and commitment to making this an opportunity for other providers. We will be tracking the outcomes from the program and we look forward to continuing to support a second pilot next fall. To learn more watch the video below about the program.
We also are honored to help support the professional development of women advanced providers over the last 5 years with our Bi-annual Professional Development Scholarship. These scholarship have helped support leadership and academic programs that help make Baystate so innovative and provide the highest level of care.
We are looking forward to bringing in an outside speaker for our Annual Dinner next September as well as working on putting together other workshops on Academic Advancement and Research and Mentoring.
Diversity of our team members, our patients, our community, our points of view – this is what makes us strong and help us deliver exceptional care tailored to each patient.
