Lesley Barron MD, MPhil, FRACS
@drlesleybarron
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2,249
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39,079
general surgeon, Medical Director of Surgical Services John Hunter Hospital. Mom, she/her, health policy & gender equity expert, greyhound lover, #genderpaygap
Awabakal/Worimi/Newcastle
Joined August 2012
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Pinned Tweet
. For when we inevitably return to a discussion of increased surgical wait times post Covid. Gender bias against female surgeons harms patients.
#centralizereferrals
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As a surgeon my feeling is I'd be doing some vitals in a panic and calling a colleague for a possible stat section for uterine rupture....
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Guy surgeons. If a HUGE study comes out showing results consistent w other big studies that your female colleagues get better results, maybe read the paper & have a think about the reasons why that might be true. Bc when you are dismissive it honestly makes you look pretty bad.
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Ok, bunch of ppl saying doctors will leave. No they won’t. I am a doctor who actually left 🇨🇦 and it’s really bloody expensive and difficult to do so. Stop saying doctors will leave over minor, fair tax changes- you look ridiculous.
CMA is concerned that capital gains tax changes introduced in the 2024 federal budget will have adverse effects on physician recruitment and retention across the country. Our statement:
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The solution to lack of primary care is not walk-in clinics.
The solution to homelessness is not shelters.
The solution to food insecurity/poverty is not food banks.
We don't pay attention and temporary solutions become long term institutions.
#SDOH
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As a surgeon, but more importantly as a human being, I am very happy to see this ban on assault weapons passed in 🇨🇦. There is no acceptable reason for private ownership of these weapons.
#cdnpoli
Recalling the history of mass-shootings in Canada from École Polytechnique to Nova Scotia, PM Justin Trudeau announces that federal govt is closing market for military-grade assault weapons, banning 1,500 models. "There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada," he says.
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I worked in Canada for years and now in Australia, which has had a 2 tier system for decades. Two tier is awful- especially for surgical care. I wish Canadians understood this better.
👋👋👋
@CdnDrs4Medicare
for this brilliant demolition of all the usual myths about
#privatization
of
#healthcare
, including the Biggest Lie of All: that the private sector does everything better.
#greed
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Can we just take a moment to reflect on the incredible misogyny of publishing an article with zero biological plausibility that discourages women from accepting pain relief in labour? Or makes her feel responsible for a diagnosis of autism in retrospect?
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My own hospital's program has assumed I am a family doctor and has redirected one of my patients to another surgeon. In case you are wondering what female surgeons put up with on a day to day basis.🙄
#genderbias
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Ppl don't seem to get that hospitals/ healthcare facilities relying on PPE donations is a pretty strange way to run a healthcare system. PPE donations should not become the food banks of keeping HC workers safe. So weird how ppl accept this as normal & somehow a good thing?
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@kelseyhuse30
Met my husband a week after I turned 30. It's worked out. This is 18 years, 3 countries, and 3 kids later.
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Dear
#cdnmedia
,
There are loads of awesome 🇨🇦 female surgeons happy to comment on resumption of elective surgeries in 🇨🇦. If you need to connect to them, DM me. Try for some balance.
Signed,
Feeling invisible in my own profession today. 🙄
#surgery
#genderbias
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Surgery is so easy for women. We have lots of Nice Guy Surgeons like Peter here to support 🚺 junior colleagues and never insinuate we got there on something besides merit. Maybe one women ok, but a majority? Slow down there missy!
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Seriously? For the love of all things sensible, please ppl do not just "show up" at a testing centre. I work there. We have to know how many swabs, PPE, timing to space ppl out, etc...in advance. That is a ridiculous strategy to increase numbers.
#COVID19Ontario
#onhealth
Interesting...
@fordnation
: If you're worried you have
#COVID19
, even if asymptomatic, "just show up to a testing centre" without an appt to get tested & "bring your family"🤔
Step in the right direction, but will
#COVIDtesting
be available routinely in high-risk settings?
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Olivia Chow is running Canada’s largest city after decades of austerity and incompetence. Give her all the money and then some more. So tired of white men taking potshots at competent women’s pay.
Toronto Mayor
@oliviachow
wants a $7,600 pay hike while raising your taxes at a record rate.
Chow must show leadership by cutting her $215,000+ pay and scrapping her massive property tax hike!
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Exercise needs to be built passively into ppls lives. Going to the gym, a camping vacation, etc are great but aren’t going to move the needle on increasingly poor health from being sedentary. Getting rid of car dependency is key.
Most tragic/ironic aspect of “but we need a giant SUV for camping/outdoor activities” discourse is —
Americans have never in history been less physically active outdoors than we are today.
Children are less aerobically fit than any time in history.
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Surgical trainees- go to clinic. A lot. It's as important, if not more, to learn who not to operate on (and how to explain why you aren't operating) than to learn who to operate on.
#MedEd
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People really need to stop assuming female physicians only work as a hobby. Many are sole income earners, or earn substantially more than their partners.
One of the weirder
#GenderPayGap
myths: female MDs are married to rich men, so they don't mind having their work devalued - they're just making spare cash for cute shoes anyway!
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#everydaysexism
People, mostly nursing staff, need to stop filing formal complaints against female physicians for behavior that wouldn't even register as in any way inappropriate coming from a male doc. Like asking that hospital protocols be followed.
@DrKatrin_Rabiei
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Wynne govt made it illegal for employers to ask for sick notes for short term illnesses- Ford govt immediately on taking office allowed them again. Ford is an idiot of a premier, on the side of employers, not workers.
Is it time to ditch sick note requirements? Doctors and patients are tired of them | CBC Radio
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I'll repeat that. SPECIALIST CARE IS USELESS WITHOUT A FAMILY PHYSICIAN.
Louder for the people in the back:
SPECIALIST CARE IS USELESS WITHOUT A FAMILY PHYSICIAN.
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This is disgusting.
Former Health Minister Christine Elliott
@celliottability
registers as lobbyist for private surgery company Clearpoint Health Network. Undermining the public health care system with profit takers is the
@OntarioPCParty
way.
#onpoli
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In the spirit of
#HerTimeIsNow
, I have resigned from Georgetown Hospital and accepted a job at Alice Springs Hospital. We will be moving back down under in the coming months. Very excited about this new opportunity.
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Women need to do less courses on leadership (they are fine & don't need to be fixed) & men need education on what doing their fair share of housework/childcare actually looks like when they have ♀️partners. It's the 2nd issue that's holding gender equity back in the workforce.
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I don't know how many more posts, DMs, emails etc from female surgeons who have empty OR lists while their male colleagues hoard surgical referrals I can take.
#cdnhealth
doesn't have an OR wait time problem, it has a problem equitably dividing up surgical work.
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@SocSurgOnc
Are there seriously no female surgical oncologists who could have been adddd to make this not a
#Manel
? And a large one at that.
#genderbias
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Officially announcing I am seeking the nomination for the Liberal party in the riding of Wellington-Halton Hills- the amazing place I have worked and called home for almost a decade.
#cdnpoli
#WomenInPolitics
#Leadership
#the905
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Dr. Tam gets an A+ from me for her leadership to date. Perfection cannot be the goal or expectation with so many unknowns and changing information.
#covid19Canada
😷
I usually reserve my opinions for
@globeandmail
columns but feel compelled to write a brief thread about the public maligning of Dr. Theresa Tam
@CPHO_Canada
and criticisms she has been 'flip-flopping' on issues like the usefulness of masks
1/
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OR thoughts for 🇨🇦 Day. Cheers to all those working today in healthcare.
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@Liz_ORiordan
“Thank you for the opportunity, I’m unable to accept/self fund unremunerated work at this time.”
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Cant believe I'm still explaining this stuff to medical leaders. Just because you have more women in an occupation, does NOT mean there is less sexism, it just means that there is more people experiencing the bias that you haven't come close to adequately addressing.
Subtweet.
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Breast surgery is of course one area with more female than male surgeons. Of course is paid less, mirroring what happens elsewhere in the workforce- if women tend to do it, it's undervalued.
#genderpaygap
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"Women are rarely able to fail up in the way men can; you have to be twice as good as a man in order to be taken half as seriously."
#COVID19
#LeadershipMatters
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Friendly
#medtwitter
reminder to please not refer patients to a surgeon and tell pts they definitely need surgery, no matter how obvious it may seem. I would prefer patients be referred with the expectation that surgery may or may NOT be offered, options will be discussed.
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I walked into the hospital yesterday for the 1st time wondering if my work will be the thing that kills me & worked a 12 hour day.
This hero drives for 6 hours to announce he will be partisan for the biggest health and economic crisis 🇨🇦 will ever see.
Sit down.
#COVID
ー19
1/ Just arrived in Ottawa after six hours of driving from my home in Wellington County to attend Parliament.
Also just read the Globe and Mail story.
To say I’m shocked is an understatement.
#cdnpoli
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Why are hospitals being built in Ontario with no on site daycare facilities? The healthcare workforce is mostly female.
Universal Child Care is the single greatest thing we can do for fix the gender wage gap between women and men. 40k women in Ontario would return to or increase work, adding $6.7B in economic activity. On
#IWD2021
we need to talk about
#childcare
.
#onpoli
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I’m going to *try* and not weigh in too much more on the pharmacist prescribing debate except to add that doctors and pharmacists should both be blaming the provincial government for the policy failure that is primary care in Ontario and Canada today….1/
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Nobody should be flabbergasted a doctor went to work unwell in Australia. It will likely happen again. There is no redundancy in the system that allows for even unpaid sick time for docs. I've had a few patients get quite angry when I've cancelled clinic/OR for illness.
#COVID19
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@MichaelChongMP
@CPHO_Canada
This is a a very backhanded tweet, undermining and insulting to Canada's top doctor, who is doing an incredible job guiding 🇨🇦 through this pandemic. It also fails to directly call out racist nonsense directed at her by members of your own party.
#cdnpoli
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I have joined
#thegreatresignation
.
Feels very strange to say that "out loud". Maybe too much of my self concept is wrapped up in being a surgeon.
Anyway, exciting stuff happening, watch this space.
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I stopped asking patients to lose weight a long time ago. I wouldn't prescribe a drug that made high blood pressure worse, so not sure why we ask patients to diet, given what we know about it's effectiveness long term.
@PaulDavidsonPhD
I’m curious if doctors perpetuate that deniability. I have heard many women clients say that their docs are quick to say lose weight as the answer to any issue (a major problem!) but I also hear this less from men. Just an interesting difference
#obsm
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We talk a lot about sexism and racism, but classism is perhaps the elephant in the room of
#meded
.
Friendly reminder that over 1/2 of medical student’s parents make at or above 80% of American income bracket.
1 in 4 med student’s parents are >95%ile for income. (>225,000 annually)
Only 5% of med student’s parents make the lowest income quintile.
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It's👏not👏 from 👏 working 👏fewer👏hours👏
Wow! 63 cents on the dollar for women specialist physicians - shocking!
#genderpaygap
🇨🇦 Look at these gaps for women physicians in pay and in leadership.
#EDI
Presentation by financial expert, Ingrid Macintosh, at
@cwimconference
.
@drlesleybarron
@DrIvyBourgeault
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In the year of 2023, an elected government official believes that supporting child care is only an issue for working MOMS. Wild that no communications staff spotted a problem with this tweet before hitting send. Just wildly awful sexist stuff.
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@realDrHartzler
Men with daughters can treat them ok. But nepotism does not equal feminism, & a lot of men fail to make this distinction. Being a man who is a feminist ally to women at work (not this dude clearly) involves how you treat women you are not related to, married to, or sleeping with.
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This is common in medicine. It was actually studied. When women give grand rounds presentations, they are introduced far more often by their first names, men with their professional title.
@maxfawcett
CBC's The Current had 2 doctors on a segment last week. The male doctor was continuously called Dr. The female doctor was called by her first name...even after the other doctor called her Dr.
I was gobsmacked.
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Big thank you to the emergency room, general surgery, anesthesia, recovery room and ward staff of
@HSN_Sudbury
for looking after my kid so well on a holiday Monday when she developed appendicitis a few hours into our vacation.
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As a general surgeon currently on call, I'm begging everyone- don't, just don't.
Gwyneth Paltrow and GOOP recommend irrigating your rectum and colon with coffee. Don’t.
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Access to specialist care needs a solid primary care foundation.
Access to good mental health care needs a solid primary care foundation.
Access to palliative care requires a solid primary care foundation.
Specialists need to start advocating for primary care access for all.
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Twitter seems to be pretty negative right now. So here's a bit of good stuff- 15 years married to this guy today- still adventuring together. 🇨🇦♥️🇦🇺
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We seriously need to address how we disadvantage poor people from being able to get into medical school. We need to make services like this obselete. Working at a fast food outlet is as good a premed experience as doing medical research.I say this as someone who did both.
#MedEd
This is gross. For $4-17K, these physicians will coach you into medical school, help you get placements etc. Most of the physician coaches are connected to Ontario med schools. I don’t think I know any of them myself or I’d be having a word. Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves.
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@JJcolemanMD
Hi, I'm a general surgeon.
You may know me from my hits "General surgeons treat all sorts of common conditions " "No, Dr. Barron isn't a man." and the chart topping "Yes, I will be the one performing your surgery."
#ilooklikeasurgeon
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Sometimes you wonder if you are making a difference and then this happens. 🙂
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Found out the hard way that an N95 mask, properly fitted, is really uncomfortable when worn for any length of time. Healthcare workers are not asking for this stuff because they want to hoard them, they're wearing them because they need to be protected.
#PPEshortage
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I know there's going to be a lot of praise for this but just a reminder that public services like higher education, including medical schools, should be properly and fully funded by taxation and not donations.
University of Toronto medical school to get record $250-million donation
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We need less people offering women coaching on their careers (these women are killing it already) and more people offering men with 🚺 partners coaching on how to share household life duties equitably. How to plan a child’s birthday party, etc…
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In surgery we have meetings/teaching/conferences early in the morning (so as not to interrupt real work), later evenings (so as not to interrupt real work), & weekends (so as not to interrupt real work). Guess what? All of it IS real work!
#MedTwitter
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@AjvictoryMD
I had gastroenteritis and cancelled a clinic. Pts complained- to my staff and eventually to my face. Ppl not being understanding about this stuff leads to presenteeism- a far bigger problem in healthcare than absenteeism.
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@drjohnm
@Yascha_Mounk
Disagree. Medicine, especially its leadership, has not used its power and privilege nearly enough to advocate for the social determinants of health and an end to racism, sexism, homophobia. In a lot of cases it has contributed to perpetuating inequities.
#MedTwitter
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This is ridiculous. Stop asking individuals to approach perfection while working in often toxic extremely emotional high stress environments. Nobody cries at work if they can help it.
#meded
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This is a male surgeon saying the quiet part out loud. The distressing thing is how many don’t, but still think this way will be responsible for completely subjective evaluations of female surgical trainees. Diversity training doesn’t fix this.
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@UWO_Gen_Sx_PD
Referrals are at almost zero so definitely a worry. No mammograms/endoscopy being done unless + symptoms, so those cases delayed. It's going to take a long time to ramp care back up, & not sure we will ever get back to pre-COVID efficiency.
#COVID19Ontario
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I'm repeating my ethical concerns here about having elderly male physicians come out of retirement, ending up infected with
#COVID
ー19 & at high risk of dying relative to other groups. If you are a health care administrator and have other options for staffing, say no thank you.
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Look what came in the mail.
#cdnhealth
#GenderPayGap
. Congratulations again to
@DocMCohen
and
@tara_kiran
. This landmark paper will be cited for many years.
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If you operate on a patient you👏do👏 the 👏follow👏up👏.
Referring docs- stop referring to diff surgeons for post op complaints. Those are 99%+ the responsibility of the operating surgeon, especially when short term, outpatient, elective issues.
#surgery
#MedTwitter
#etiquette
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@MigsRunner
Female physicians are less likely to be offered paid consultant roles with either pharma or industry.
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The reports I am seeing of mostly older (60 plus) male physicians dying from
#COVID19
makes me wonder if the sane demographic coming out of retirement to work the frontlines is a great idea. Voluntarily maybe, and as a last resort only.
#medtwitter
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I was invited to talk at November AGM about the
#genderpaygap
in Ontario general surgery by
@OAGS1
but "make sure it doesn't turn into a bitch session" Okaaaay. And then yesterday I was uninvited. 🤷🏻♂️
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There's no evidence that increasing med school enrolment results in drs practicing in areas of need, either geographically or by specialty. So this is just a preelection ploy & not actually going to help you get a family doc, since we have no coherent workforce plan.
#onhealth
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Surgical training in Australia. 19 days on call in a row is not ok.
#burnout
#thedrum
#surgery
@mindbodymiko
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@flaminhaystacks
@ask_aubry
Sorry this happened. Unfortunately could easily substitute “surgery” for “sailing”.
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Incredible that this happens before Canadian trained physicians can freely practice in other provinces within Canada.
U.S. trained physicians will soon be allowed to independently practice in Ontario without completing Canadian licensure requirements.
🇺🇸 → 🇨🇦
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Re all the "tomorrow there will be a female VP stuff" going on....yes great, but the US could have *elected* a female president in 2016 and avoided the last 4 years of complete chaos. So👏much👏work👏to👏do👏.
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Not unfair, just part of your job.
Ontario doctors say it's unfair they have to provide referrals for medical services that clash with their beliefs
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Love this so much.
I was set upon by a group of immigrants in Dublin yesterday. They gave me a triple heart bypass and saved my life 🫀😊
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Ohio has a population of just under 12 million-nearly 5000
#COVID19
cases there yesterday. Ontario 14 million pop has 1000, NSW, 🇦🇺(7.5 mil) has 5, only one of them community spread. Politics matters.
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Going on 3 months to be unable to visit my mom is ridiculous. I want to know what criteria they are using to decide when to let visitors in.
#LTC
#onpoli
#COVID19Ontario
Infection control is important. But so is feeding people. It’s well past time to tear down the iron ring and let family caregivers into long-term care homes, by
@picardonhealth
via
@globeandmail
#Covid19
#NotJustAVisitor
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Dear Academic Docs,
When a community doc sends you an interesting case suited to your care, we appreciate a letter back even if we are not the family doc. Trainees doing your dictations? Please teach them this etiquette too.
Signed,
Doc wondering what happened to the pt.
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Clinical AND research experiences are much more easily arranged by ppl who have parents who are physicians themselves. My unpopular opinion is that neither should be particularly important.
medical students should have more clinical experience prior to medical school. and medical schools should prioritize applicants with clinical experience rather than multiple publications.
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This is a terrible idea. Surgical backlogs should be addressed by removing those cases of low value care, and ramping up volume in public hospitals, ideally by hiring un and underemployed surgeons.
Province seeks private health-care providers' help to address backlog of surgeries due to COVID-19 | CBC News
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Not getting paid til July for all telemedicine provided is bad. What really sucks is having to run a private business as a straight fee for service doc when 80-90% of my billable work is cancelled indefinitely. And
@OntariosDoctors
doing nothing about it.
#onpoli
#COVID19Ontario
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I hate this stereotype-it plays into the idea that if men come in something is wrong but if women do, it’s anxiety. We have data that women’s symptoms are often dismissed/underinvestigated. Maybe we should just listen to pts regardless of who told them to come in?
Just a reminder that when an ER patient says “my wife made me come in”, something is really fucking wrong until proven otherwise.
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@journo_dale
I’m a doctor and agree. Incorporation was a poor substitute for proper physician remuneration reform.
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I've been told by 2 separate ppl in the past week that only 15% of new med school grads want to do primary care in Australia. That's a very frightening number that should have everyone concerned.
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Funny how we want “well rounded” people to apply to medical school (even demanding excellence in extracurriculars) But once they get to residency expect them to give it all up for the job.
#meded
But be prepared to get asked on EVERY SINGLE INTERVIEW. Towards the end of the trail I wanted to say: “let’s be honest, I haven’t had a real hobby since 2014”, but I would always say cooking, exercising, etc...then I realized I was listing IADLs...IADLs are my hobbies now. 😅
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@arghavan_salles
Exactly. This is a comment I got from a troll after a tweet about something completely unrelated. White ppl trying to keep each other in line and convince themselves we live in a meritocracy. 🙄
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The profession of medicine needs to address why we deter people from low income backgrounds, who are far more likely to be racialized, to even apply to medical school-high tuition fees +other reasons, & then make it difficult for them to get in bc of the criteria used.
#MedEd
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If you think its too expensive to house people, you should see what it costs to NOT house them.
#housingforall
Fact: Toronto’s Social Housing Waitlist has Grown more than 50% in Last Decade
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Requiring physicians taking parental leave to pay an entire year of membership fees to medical organizations is unfair, a financial burden, and frankly sexist, since women take far more of this type of leave than men.
#cdnhealth
@cpso_ca
@CMA_Docs
@Royal_College
@OntariosDoctors
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I'm going to let you in on a secret. Doctors go to work sick. All the time. We generally don't have a choice, or some pretty poor options if we have to take time off. Double standard applies to POC often in medicine. And what about his right to privacy?
Dr.Ngola overcame hardships to live the immigrant dream in NB. Then Canadian racism hit: he’s labeled Patient zero for COVID, premier threatens prosecution, he is doxxed, lives in fear - all for doing what other doctors did. By
@AmiraElghawaby
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My 4th grader developed appendicitis and all I had to worry to about re $ was how much parking and coffee cost at the hospital. Thanks 🇨🇦 healthcare!
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