Erica Thaler, MD FACS on Surgery and Serving as a Mentor
Image via David DeBalko Photography
Dr. Thaler shares her passion for her chosen specialty and her advice for rising women in medicine
Erica Thaler, MD FACS currently serves as the Chief of the Division of General Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery and Vice Chair of the same department at Penn Medicine.
“When I was in medical school, I was most interested in surgery,” she said. “Then I went through a process of narrowing down to the specialty that I thought was most compelling.”
She landed on ENT because it is the only surgical specialty where as a physician, you do both the medicine and the surgery. “Urology has nephrologists, cardiac surgery has cardiologists, orthopedics has rheumatologists, but ENT just has us. We're doing everything.”
A Passion for Complexity
Becoming a surgeon is hard, but otorhinolaryngologists have their work cut out for them. “I think many physicians shy away from this part of the body because the anatomy is complex and the diseases are very specific to the anatomy,” said Dr. Thaler.
But she isn’t daunted—in fact, she savors the challenge. “I think it’s the most interesting surgery in the body, partly because of the anatomy and it being so complex but also because almost every major technical innovation in surgery in the last 50 years has been brought into our field. We do microscopic surgery, episcopic surgery, robotic surgery, and we do open surgery,” she said. “It’s never dull. You learn new things all the time, and you don't get stuck doing a single operation day after day after day.”
But it’s been slow progress to get other women as engaged in this specialty. When Dr. Thaler came out of residency, the specialty had 6% women. The number has risen to about 20%.
“Diversity and inclusion is important because it gives you more perspectives and that's healthy,” said Dr. Thaler. “In the last 10 years or so, there’s been a notable increase in women entering this specialty.”
Dr. Thaler remains optimistic that this trend will continue, but admits, “it’s been slow progress.”
On Leadership
Dr. Thaler isn’t just a leader in her field, she’s also an academic leader, currently serving as the interim chair of the department. She’s usually the Vice-chair for Faculty Affairs.
These positions have provided a lot of fulfillment. “I've loved it. The faculty in our department are tremendous, and I consider it a privilege to be able to participate in this part of our students’ lives,” she said. “I highlight their academic accomplishments with the goal of having them move along in the academic ranks, get promoted, and gain academic visibility.”
One of the primary ways to do that is through mentorship. When Dr. Thaler was coming through school, there were no women on faculty. There were few women in any surgical fields.
“It was really hard to imagine yourself 20, 30 years down the line,” she said. “I just had no idea. The thing that kept me going was that I had this passion for surgery, and I knew that it was what I wanted to do. That conviction carried me through a lot of circumstances that were—at times—difficult, just because I didn't have people to talk to or couldn't see how it might work out.”
Thankfully, as more women continue to enter and rise in the medical field, finding mentors and role models becomes easier. “When people coming into the field see that there are women further along doing things successfully and have normal, balanced lives, it snowballs. The more it's normal and not bizarro, the easier it becomes for others to follow.”
It’s also important to recognize that men can serve as valuable mentors. “One of my greatest mentors was the chair of the department when I was a resident, David Kennedy,” she said. “He helped me tremendously in my early academic career and gave me a lot of guidance. There are people out there who are helpful—you have to look for them.”
See Yourself as a Leader Now
Having strong mentors and role models is one part of the equation to increasing women in leadership roles. Mindset is another.
According to Dr. Thaler, it starts by seeing yourself as a leader. “If I could talk to myself 30 years ago, I would say that you have to know that you want to become a leader in order for it to happen.”
To women starting out in their careers, her advice is to start now. “I think that visualizing yourself as that person early on will help you seek mentors and follow a career path that will make achieving your vision more likely.”
“And there's no reason for women in their twenties and thirties not to think about that. I think that many women at that stage in their lives often focus on work-life balance, and while that’s important, I think that somewhere in there, there has to be this thought that you want to keep progressing over time, and you have to think about that early to make it happen later.”
Listen to Dr. Thaler Share Her Story
There are now more women entering medical school than men. But that doesn't mean our work is done. To achieve our best future, women need to be active in leadership roles across the industry from academics, to healthcare, to research. In this series, the Foundation talks to leaders in medicine to get their perspective on how we move forward building on the strides we've already taken.