Long before she became a dean, or even a doctor, Suzi Rose was a young medical student about to add a new role to her eventually long list of titles: mother. It’s a challenging choice for many, but even more so for those who choose to combine parenthood with a burgeoning career in medicine.
“I was the only student in my class to have had a baby during medical school,” says Rose, who’s now senior vice dean for medical education in the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania. “There was no infrastructure to support the advancement of the curriculum, and I was lucky to be able to figure it out on my own. I would like to think this has changed, and the support for students is more widespread.”
As today’s medical students would say, the struggle is (still) real, but juggling parenthood and studying is a lot easier with the formal support structures that Rose and her colleagues have made, as well as the informal ways in which student parents support each other.
At PSOM, students adding children to their family are encouraged to take advantage of not only family leave but can also consider a transition of the family leave, when ready, to a scholarly leave. During a scholarly leave, a student is engaged in full-time scholarly work but there may be more flexibility with time and autonomy of the schedule, which can be more accommodating for the demands of parenthood than clinical work in the full-time required curriculum which has a more prescribed schedule. The Jordan Medical Education Center—PSOM’s medical education space—is home to a lactation pod which provides a clean, comfortable, and private place to people expressing breastmilk or nursing children.
PSOM’s Student Affairs has also further expanded its resources for students who become parents. And the Family Resource Center at Penn has been providing resources to PSOM students and postdocs with children since 2010, such as emergency back-up child care and free Care.com memberships, family-friendly and parenting events specifically designed for student and postdoc parents, and more, at their 3615 Locust Walk facilities.
All of these resources are helpful to students who choose to become parents, such as 2022 graduate Kirsten Sandgren, who is now a first-year Psychiatry resident at Penn. She is mom to 3-year-old Imogen (aka “Mo”)—who arrived at the transition from preclinical learning to clerkships—and “fourth-year baby” Mirren, who’s quickly approaching her first birthday. After Mo’s birth, Sandgren was able to work on a master’s degree in bioethics and participate in research through the department of Otolaryngology before returning to her medical degree program. “I am sensing a move toward more proactive support of parents, and I think it’s very exciting that there may be more matter-of-course institutional support moving forward,” she says.
This story is by Meredith Mann. Read more at Penn Medicine News.
