Life in Her Hands: The Inspiring Story of a Pioneering Female Surgeon

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a b Hanson, Michele (31 July 2002). "First lady of the theatre". The Guardian . Retrieved 8 October 2017. After I retired in 2003, I took on the chairmanship of the Stroke Association for five years which was a wonderful experience. I went all over the country and really enjoyed watching the average person’s knowledge of stroke develop from almost complete ignorance to quite a sophisticated understanding. I then spent one year as the BMA’s president and another five years as the chairman of the BMA’s board of science in addition to a number of other charitable roles. Averil Mansfield, MBE, retiring professor of vascular surgery at St Mary's hospital in London, gives all the answers you don't expect. Was her career one long struggle in a male-dominated profession? "No." Has she encountered hostility from male colleagues? "No." Does she feel that she has been discriminated against? "No."

Book Review: Life in Her Hands | The Bulletin of the Royal

I’ve lived through the advent of ultrasound, CT and MRI scanning, and all have made diagnosis more reliable and help plan for surgery,” she says. Perhaps most exciting of all: I learned to play the cello! I’m a good pianist and have been for quite a part of my life but I’d always wanted to play in an orchestra, so I thought I’d take up the cello. I wouldn’t say I’m a cellist at all but I play it sufficiently well to enjoy it, to play with other people, and to play in an orchestra. I play with two amateur orchestras and they give me a great deal of pleasure. It’s a lovely thing to do at the age of 80! Advice for young surgeons Unfortunately, there’s still a feeling that it’s a boys’ game, which is a shame, because it isn’t.” Mansfield’s gratitude to the supportive colleagues and superiors she encountered – first at Liverpool’s Broadgreen Hospital and later at Hillingdon Hospital and St Mary’s Paddington, in London – was magnified when she heard evidence given to the Royal College of Surgeons Working Party on discrimination in surgery in 2021. Averil’s book will be published today, Thursday 23 February, by Ebury Publishing. You can find out more hereIn 1991, Women in Surgical Training (Wist) was established by the RCS to encourage women into surgery and Mansfield was its founding chairwoman. "At that time we didn't have an organisation in this college that was dedicated to encouraging women, so we began it, to show that the career and the college are open to women. That message, 'You can do it, you are not going to meet antagonism,' might be the very thing women need to hear to encourage them to try it." In the past 10 years, the number of women consultant surgeons has almost doubled; the RCS hopes that by 2009, 20% of consultants will be women. Camilla was full of good humour and we spent time together in a studio afterwards, talking to TV channels, until she suddenly said: ‘I think I’d better go home now. We’ve got rather a busy week’. It was the week of Harry and Meghan’s wedding!” Today, 17% of surgeons are women, although male consultant surgeons still outnumber females by a ratio of 8:1. Membership of Women in Surgery, which also welcomes medical students, has grown to 6,000.

The Guardian First lady of the theatre | Education | The Guardian

Just 2% of surgeons in the UK were women when Mansfield qualified in the early Seventies. By the Nineties, when 97% of surgeons were male, not much had changed. Averil Mansfield was an ambitious and talented young doctor when she announced, to a senior surgeon, her plan to marry her architect boyfriend.One outcome is the setting up of a working group, Parents in Surgery, to come up with ways to support surgeons with children, given the anti-social hours many are expected to work, as well as frequently being on call.