Breaking the Scalpel Ceiling: Dr. Paula Ferrada’s Trailblazing Journey in Trauma Surgery | Ep. 189
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have a very special guest.

And I've really been interested to learn more about what is it like to be a trauma surgeon. So we wanted to get an incredible inspirational person, Dr. Paula Ferrata. You are a trauma surgeon. You were born in Columbia, and I know you're going to share your whole story. And you are now one of the few doing what you do with the background that you have and your experience.

And it's, I mean, a trauma surgeon has to be one of the most complex jobs in the world. I mean, I can't wait to dive in. But let's begin with your story. How did you and why did you want to become a surgeon? Dan, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. I, as you said, I was born in Colombia, South America, and I had the privilege of having a mom that was a nurse and a dad that was a surgeon.

And when I'm going to be honest and vulnerable, when they didn't have health, when they didn't have child care, it just brought me to work. So I saw babies being delivered when I was 11 years old. I started like watching my dad in the operating room when I was 12 years old. And it was more like surgery picked me than the other way around.

Now, how I made it to the United States is like doing training. In Colombia, we would go straight from high school to medical school and doing training. There was a gap. So I came to the United States to Emory, a great immemorial, to do a rotation. And I was just amazed in the care that people get in the United States and the facts that we had blood available, that we have helicopters available, that we have CT scans available, things that in Latin America, especially in the university hospital, were not.

So I always wanted to train in the United States so I can somehow find a way to not only give back to Colombia and to the world, but I think that get the best of both worlds so we can help the patient in need. That's amazing. So you're in the U.S., you're starting to be a surgeon now.

How was that experience? And I know we were talking earlier, there's very few women who are in that role. Were there any challenges breaking down these barriers and really proving that you are just as great as anyone else as a surgeon?

I think I'm super happy that I came to the United States. I'm very proud of everything that we have done. I always, I came with the intention of going back, but, you know, life happens and, you know, I got married and I have children. So I never really went back physically, but there's a lot of things that we do in collaboration with Latin American, with the world, especially the world of trauma that I have the privilege of being part of.

If you talk about proving yourself, I think I'm still proving myself every day. In the United States, Latino physicians represent only 6.3% of the total physician pool and Latina female physicians are less than 2.4% of all United States physicians. And that's all physicians, not only surgeons.

Now, in terms of advancing in leadership roles, full professors of surgery that is who I am is only at 21%. Surgery chairs, which is the privilege that I have the privilege of serving, you know, by healthcare by being the chair of surgery, only 14% are women. From those three are Latina and one is a foreign writer. So I consider this an honor that I don't take for granted.

The path of coming to the United States, I came to Miami. I did a lot of work. I did research. Then I was promised a spot that I didn't get, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, my mom used to say always things happen for a reason. And you at the time don't believe it, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because I had the opportunity to go to Boston and

and train at one of the Harvard programs and be the first Colombian woman that graduated from a Harvard program from surgery. And that was a great experience. I didn't do it with the intention of being the first at anything, but I think my presence at those institutions actually helped other Latino surgeons and other women learn

surgeons to create a path also of success that now I'm seeing. I'm seeing people that I was mentoring at the time when I was even at Reston that now are doing very successful things within the Harvard system.

Then after that, I went to Pittsburgh and I did an extra year of fellowship. Then I went to Shock Trauma, Maryland, which is the mega trauma in the United States and did a year of acute care surgery. Then I was in a hospital in Virginia for 11 years at Virginia Commonwealth University, where I did several things. I started working in my leadership skills and research, became a full professor, and I have been in Inova Health since.

scenes 2021 where I came here to direct our trauma system. We have a level one trauma center in Fairfax. We have a level three that will be a level two in Loudoun. And we have another hospital that we're thinking about bringing it to a level three trauma

We serve a population of 3.2 million people here in Northern Virginia. And we're just like, that's the leadership part that help us help us help people way above and beyond one patient at a time. However, I feel like our

Life is a life of service, and I feel that it's a privilege for us to take care of those patients, any type of patient that is in a trauma situation or requires emergency surgery or requires surgical critical care. For us, it's a privilege to do that in the one-on-one relationship or in the broader scale, improving the systems of trauma in the United States and in the world. I mean, that's amazing. Somebody once told me, if you see it, you can be it.

So I hope that people see this and say, oh, I want to be just like Dr. Paula Ferrata, and I'm going to become a surgeon as well. Amazing story. Incredible. I'm very curious because I could personally never do that role. Like I...

I don't handle fear. And, and, you know, I'm sure you have to act so fast. I'm not really good at that. And I'd be the worst surgeon. But how is that feeling when, when you have the I mean, this is like a life or death situation. Like you said, these are level 123 trauma centers, you have something going on that is is so dire, and you can't make a mistake.

How do you handle that feeling? Well, I love that feeling. I think that there's, the reason why I say trauma surgeon pick me, I think that there is a certain personality that you have to be able to thrive in chaos. And instead of seeing chaos, when you have a lot of patients and a lot and fat space and things are decisions that you have to take with very little information and be okay with that and grow, right? Sometimes there's,

you don't want to make mistakes. Nobody shows up to make mistakes. I think that, um,

The care of the trauma patient is not depending on one person. It's a team. You have your team of nurses. You have a team of emergency medicine physicians. You have the trauma surgeon. You have the intensivist, nurses, respiratory therapists, residents, fellows. They're all part of the team. I think that we have a lot of things in place that prevents us from doing mistakes. And when there's a mistake, it gets caught.

by somebody in the team so we can all serve the patient better. And we also have, especially in the United States systems where we can go back and look at things that happen for patients. So you honor those patients by not letting it happen again. I think that how do you deal with it? I think it's a stressful, um,

But it's also fun. I don't think burnout happens in the intensity or the time that it takes for us to do the things that we do. I think burnout for physicians happens when you lose the autonomy of taking the decisions that you think are best for your patients. So I think autonomy and I think focusing on gratitude. It sounds...

It may be silly, but focus on the hormones that make you happy. Make sure you see the sun shine every day. That's serotonin. Make sure that you feel accomplished. That's dopamine. Make sure you don't lose connection with your own purpose. Have your purpose really clear and don't lose that connection. And don't lose connections with patients because it's through those connections where we feel that our purpose as healers is accomplished. Thank you for sharing that. And I could see where it's really a team effort.

So when it comes to leadership, what do you find works well for you? Or what do you do to really create this unified team effort? I think that it's very important that even if the surgeon is the captain of the ship, that the captain of the ship feels that he or she is able to share vulnerability with your team. It's okay to say that you're tired. It's okay to ask for help. Not only okay, it's necessary.

for you to be able to show vulnerability to your team. And when we go through these difficult situations, let's say you have a mask actually, or a patient that is really sick, those moments of acute stress actually bring people together. So capitalize on those times to create those relationships.

I truly believe that the safest operating room or the safest trauma bay in the world is where everybody feels that they can speak their mind without fear of retaliation. Where you can be like, yeah, she or he is the surgeon, but I can say, hey, can you explain this to me? Why are you doing things differently? Why are you deviating from protocol? And

And I think that the only way to achieve that is creating relationships of true trust, knowing that we all are there with the sole purpose of making a patient better. We all want the same thing. Nobody showed up in the team to do the wrong thing. And we start by not assuming evil, always assuming good intent, having a culture of trust and psychological safety.

be able to speak up to each other without fear of retaliation. And we have the ability of showing vulnerability to each other. I know you've published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, which is incredible.

What makes you so passionate for the research side? Because I think through research and education, we make patients better. I think that the most dangerous phrase in science and in surgery, but in science overall is we are doing it because we have always done it that way. I think you have to have the opportunity of questioning the status quo. And if the status quo is not good enough, create a new status quo. And the only way you do it is through investigation.

I think that educating our new generation ensures that our patients get the best care, right? Because these people, the residents, our residents, our fellows, our students are going to be the people that are going to take care of me and our family. So we want them to be the best possible. And that's why education is so important.

And then research is what allows us to change the status quo, number one, prove the status quo if it doesn't need changing. But if there's an impact that we can do that is in a broader scale, not only for Northern Virginia population of one-on-one with the patient, but nationwide or global-wise, I think that it's through research that we are able to answer those questions. Amazing. I mean...

When you come back in a year, you might be at 250, 300 peer reviewed articles. I can tell you're very passionate about that. And I mean, it sounds like that could cement your legacy, you know, in the future, all of this research and, and,

and changing the status quo. And people are going to be learning from what you're doing and they're going to be using that. And you're going to be one of the best in your field, which is incredible in terms of, I think we all want to be known for something. So when it comes to the future for you,

What does the future look like for you? What are you hopeful for doing in the future? So that's a great question. So I think about this. What do I want my legacy to be and what I want to be known for? And it's not...

the papers that I have written or the positions that I have held, I want to be known for somebody that help other people achieve their goals and their dreams. I want to be known by somebody that challenges the paradigm. So what people think a surgeon needs to be like, instead of this authoritarian being that has a God complex that we were talking about before we started,

be somebody that wants to empower people, that wants to help people, that where compassion and kindness is not in a strategy, but a way of being. And where surgery is a field that we can level the plane a little bit and have people, you know, accomplish their goals and go up in leadership and show their worth because of their hard work, not because of the external things.

like ethnicity or your ethnicity or your gender or, you know, the pedigree of the place where you train, but actually your true worth and your service for patients. Because honestly, when we talk about healthcare, this is who we are. We are a place for service to other people, to one patient at a time and to our community as a whole.

Have you ever had any students that maybe you are mentoring or people that you mentored, maybe other surgeons, and then later on, they talk to you about the impact that you made? And if so,

How was that feeling? It makes my day, my week, my month, my year. When I hear somebody saying like, thank you for giving me an opportunity. Thank you for giving me a chance. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your advice. And that resulted in somebody doing something good for themselves, their family, their patients or the world that,

That's a great feeling. I think that that's a fantastic feeling. It's saving somebody's life or giving a chance to a patient to returning a patient to their family home. That's another great feeling. I think that that's why I said before, it's not through...

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long hours that or intensity that we get that physicians get burned out. We get burned out when we don't have the capacity of taking the decisions that we know we need to take for the patients that we care for. Well, I know a few years ago, everyone was saying people in the medical field are the heroes.

But I don't feel like that should have ever stopped. And I think people in the medical field are always the heroes. So thank you for all that you're doing. Not only are you saving lives, but you're helping other people and they can save lives. I mean, it's really such an extreme impact when you look at how many people could then take that and then they take that and then they take that. So I can tell that you are all about impact, not only from your patients and everyone that you help,

are seeing, but then also the young surgeons or up and coming surgeons and what they're learning. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information. Maybe they're inspired to be a surgeon as well and they need some

some advice, how can they do so? I can share with you. They can contact me through LinkedIn or social media. I'm in Twitter and Instagram, but also my email. I think if you Google my name, you'll find my email. My door is always open for anything that anybody needs. It is my pleasure and my privilege to be able to be part of anybody's journey. Well, Dr. Paula Ferrata, thank you so much for all you do. And thank you for joining us today on Founders Story.

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