{"id":64189,"date":"2018-11-29T11:33:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T16:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=64189"},"modified":"2020-10-30T10:55:40","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T14:55:40","slug":"jennifer-tseng-from-receptionist-to-chief-surgeon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2018\/11\/29\/jennifer-tseng-from-receptionist-to-chief-surgeon\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Tseng: From Receptionist to Chief Surgeon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first woman in Boston to lead surgical units at a medical school and teaching hospital<\/h4>\n
\"\"
Jennifer Tseng is chair of the School of Medicine surgery department and the Boston Medical Center surgeon-in-chief. She is the first woman to hold such leadership positions at a Boston medical school and academic hospital. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For all of Boston\u2019s renown as a center of pioneering medicine, there remains one medical field where hospitals here lag, just like everywhere else: female surgeons.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes Jennifer Tseng<\/a>\u2019s appointment in 2017 as chair of the BU School of Medicine department of surgery and as chief of surgery at Boston Medical Center<\/a> a unique breakthrough: Tseng is the first woman appointed chair and chief of surgery at an academic medical center in Boston.<\/p>\n

Women account for more than a third of all physicians and physicians-in-training in the United States and are half of all medical students. And yet, in 2015 they numbered only 19.2 percent of general surgeons, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tseng specializes in surgical oncology and gastrointestinal surgery. In a recent chair\u2019s note, she writes of MED\u2019s tradition of diversity and inclusion, dating back to one of its founding institutions, the New England Female Medical College<\/a>, the first US institution to train female physicians, including the first black female physician, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, in 1864, and in 1890, Charles Eastman, the first Native American physician.<\/p>\n

Tseng was born in northern California, the daughter of immigrants who fled their native China for Taiwan in 1949 and came to the United States in the 1960s to go to college. After graduating from Stanford University with degrees in biology and English, Tseng earned a medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and a master\u2019s in public health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.<\/p>\n

MED\u2019s James Utley Professor of Surgery, Tseng was formerly a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School\u2014only the fourth female full professor in the school\u2019s history\u2014and chief of surgical oncology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is married to a cardiologist and has two children, ages 11 and 13.<\/p>\n

BU Today<\/em> talked with Tseng about how she chose medicine over a career in writing, the connection between surgery and humanism, and the lessons she\u2019s carried forward from her first job as a medical receptionist.
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

BU Today<\/em>: Were there any physicians in your family before you?
\n<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tseng:<\/strong> My grandfather was a general and thoracic surgeon and my grandmother was an OB-GYN and primary care doctor during the day. She assisted him in their surgicenter they ran out of their house at night. They practiced in China and Taiwan. They both inspired me to go into medicine. They were in their 50s when they came to the United States\u2014they were chain immigrants\u2014and they retrained as psychiatrists.<\/p>\n

Why psychiatry?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain type of surgeon that\u2019s the contemplative, quiet, gentle surgeon with great hands. My grandfather was very much like that. The line between surgery and psychiatry for that type\u2014it\u2019s very profound.<\/p>\n

What is it about surgery that attracts such a person? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Surgery is intense. It\u2019s one of those things that, when the stars align in the operating room, you can be truly of the moment. Everything else needs to go away\u2026.You are so intimately connected to this person you\u2019re operating on. People are literally putting their life and their body and their spirit in your hands\u2026and if you mess up, the stakes are incredibly high.<\/p>\n

And yet people do it. They surrender their beings to you. It\u2019s this incredible privilege and trust.<\/p>\n

Were you drawn to medicine as a child?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I was always interested. Some of it is this Asian immigrant, \u2018You will be a doctor\u2019 thing. At five, I said I was going to be a doctor. Then I was going to be a writer, then I was going to be a dancer, but I had no talent as a dancer, so I ruled that out.<\/p>\n

At Stanford, poet Adrienne Rich was one of my advisors\u2026.I spent a lot of time thinking about not going into medicine, and becoming a writer\u2026.She was very supportive. She said that being of service was the most important thing.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to become a surgeon?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I felt in general surgery I could do the best part of medicine, understand the biology of disease, and still have the powerful tool of operating to help people.<\/p>\n

Did you face resistance from men in the operating room?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think most of the trouble comes from within. Maybe this is true of everybody, but it\u2019s particularly true of successful women\u2014I think there\u2019s this little voice in your head that says maybe you\u2019re not good enough, or maybe you don\u2019t deserve to be there\u2026.That voice may be what drives many of us, men and women, to work harder\u2026but I think it\u2019s very easy for that voice to spiral into being just negativity, insecurity, putting yourself down.<\/p>\n

The number of times I\u2019ve been mistaken for a nurse or respiratory therapist is legion\u2014if I spent time worrying about that, which I did early on, it doesn\u2019t really help.<\/p>\n

You know, I started as a medical receptionist\u2026<\/p>\n

When was that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In high school. My mom made me take typing over the summer; if you can type, you can always have a job. At 16, I got a job as a medical receptionist. First I was at the Palo Alto Medical Center. The next summer I switched to Valley Medical Center, which is a county hospital in San Jose.<\/p>\n

I worked there every summer, holidays, weekends. It was great. I got paid $9 something early on\u2014a huge amount of money at the time. I would type, and answer the phone, and deal with the patients who walked in.<\/p>\n

It was a cancer clinic. Nobody spoke English. I learned to work with two other secretaries, who were older than me, and a bunch of doctors and nurses and radiation technologists, and early on I started to realize that it\u2019s not just about the doctor, it\u2019s a team.<\/p>\n

I could not do surgery if I didn\u2019t have a nurse, a scrub tech, and a resident, an anesthesiologist, and a CRNA [certified registered nurse anesthetist].<\/p>\n

People say that oncologists are deeply compassionate and empathetic\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you\u2019re with somebody who has a new diagnosis of cancer or who thinks they might have cancer, everything that is unimportant falls away and the things that are the most relevant remain\u2014your essential humanity, your family, your religion, your belief system\u2026.You\u2019re with somebody when they\u2019re focusing on their legacy or what their place in the world is. That can be a huge pit of despair for some people, so if you can be there, that\u2019s an incredible privilege and it can be a joy because you can really help them.<\/p>\n

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Sara Rimer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first woman in Boston to lead surgical units at a medical school and teaching hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91,295],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89890,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64189\/revisions\/89890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}