Women In Surgery at the Emory Residencies
62 episodes listed below
Surgery, mentorship, and life in training.
The WISER Podcast is a measured interview series centered on women in surgical training and practice at Emory. Recent episodes move from chief resident career paths to motherhood, inclusion, and the practical advice that helps trainees survive demanding medical environments.
PRESS PLAY
The WISER Podcast offers a grounded look at surgical training through long-form conversations with women at and around Emory. It favors reflection over polish. Recent episodes spend time with chief general surgery residents, faculty voices, and mothers in medicine, asking how their paths formed and what they wish trainees understood sooner. The answers are rarely simple. A resident may describe arriving at surgery without a medical family, then explain why intern year should be about becoming an excellent doctor before chasing the operating room. Another may move from an all-girls high school to MIT, through unfulfilling technical internships, and toward a surgical career shaped by family influence. Another traces the line from wilderness medicine and backpacking trips to trauma and critical care. These biographies matter because the show uses them carefully. Personal history becomes instruction. The conversations ask what it takes to manage patients, work with nurses and APPs, learn ICU care, read consistently, and grow into responsibility without pretending the path is effortless. The show also gives serious space to equity and mentorship. Dr. Green’s episode frames inclusion as an intentional practice, with sponsors and mentors helping build better places for those who follow. The Moms in Medicine episodes widen the frame again. Dr. Schmidt speaks about parenting, disability, clinical work, research, and the pressure to return after a C-section. Dr. Lagergren discusses IVF, pregnancy, maternity leave, and the need to understand one’s own body while building a surgical career. The tone stays respectful and accessible. It is not dramatic for its own sake. It is an archive of hard-won advice from people who can name both the strain and the meaning of the work.
Made for: For medical students, surgical trainees, residents, and physicians interested in women’s experiences in surgery, mentorship, equity, and family life alongside demanding clinical work.
What sets it apart: The show stands out for letting career stories breathe until they become concrete guidance. It connects surgical skill-building with identity, family, institutional support, and responsibility to the next generation.
WOMEN IN SURGERY AT THE EMORY RESIDENCIES
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Candid surgical interviews turn training, mentorship, pregnancy, and workplace pressure into practical knowledge about building a life in medicine.
The WISER Podcast makes surgical careers legible through interviews that favor candid experience over polished professional biography. Guests describe routes into surgery, the expectations placed on trainees, and the daily work of becoming a capable doctor before mastering the…
Four weeks after a C-section, back in clinic: your questions about maternity leave get sharper.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at how a chief resident thinks about becoming a surgeon.
The Wiser Podcast conversation with Dr. Bernadette Pelletier works best as a steady account of surgical training year by year. Her path, from a family without medicine to medical school at UT Southwestern and residency at Emory, gives the discussion a clear arc.
A steady conversation about mentorship, inclusion, and the practical reach of equity in surgery.
WISER opens its new season around Dr. Wendy Green, a faculty member in Emory surgery, and presents her path as one shaped by mentorship, leadership, and a firm commitment to core values.
Motherhood and medicine are balanced with clarity here, showing how family reshapes a clinical career and the perspective that follows.
Dr. Nikki Schmidt's reflections on motherhood, her clinical and research work, and the way her first son's disability redirected her professional life give the episode its center.
A surgeon's maternity-leave story that treats the paperwork as seriously as the pregnancy itself.
Dr. Lagergren's story moves from law to surgery and motherhood with a practical, unvarnished tone. She recalls growing up in Gulf Breeze, Florida, realizing law was not for her, and eventually finding her place in surgery, but the most memorable detail is the moment she scans a…
Jackie Lee's pregnancy story shows what surgical training demands when the body will not follow its schedule.
The Wiser Podcast's second Moms of Medicine conversation brings family building into the operating room, where Jackie Lee's pregnancy symptoms made the usual demands of surgical training much harder to carry.
A clear look at a surgical career built for a field that keeps changing.
Dr. Kristen Freeman's conversation with Laura Schwieger and Helen O'Leary follows a path from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to a general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery research fellowship at the University of Colorado, then on to a…
Practical anesthesia safety, one case at a time.
Clear conversations on bones, joints, and recovery.
Rachel Holstein and Julia Burns talk with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Dr.
Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
WISER opens a new season with Dr.
Megan Wasson and Amelia Fogel open the conversation.
Shannon Hsu and Julia Burns open the conversation with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Dr. Lee says a first-year job can be ruled out by maternity leave policies that are “so low.”
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Laura Schwieger and Helen O'Leary sit down with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.