Women in Emergency Medicine

Founded in January 2016, the UMMC Women in Emergency Medicine (WEM) Group is open to all physicians in the department. The goals of the WEM Group are to provide mentorship and sponsorship of female emergency medicine physicians, to recruit more women to our specialty, and to support and retain female residents and faculty members. 

With women representing only 37% of academic physicians nationally, we believe the future success of academic emergency medicine is linked to the recruitment, advancement, and leadership of female faculty. 

In 2012, we had only three female faculty members in our department. Due in part to the effort of the WEM Group, we have since added eight women faculty. In addition, in 2017, one year after the establishment of the WEM Group, we matched the largest group of female residents in our program’s history. In 2019, our departmental chair, Dr. Alan Jones, was awarded the GWIMS Trailblazer Award, given to the male faculty member at UMMC who best supports, mentors, and promotes female faculty.

The WEM Group meets three to four times a year for events such as gatherings at faculty members’ homes, dinner at local restaurants, group exercise classes, and breakfast Q & A sessions for medical students. With the support of our chair, we also offer two travel grants annually for female faculty members to attend the FeminEM national conference.

Medical students interested in attending our events may email Dr. Risa Moriarity or call (601) 815-4158.