The power of students can be immense. In a team, each person brings something to the table and has different strengths to offer. Students offer the benefit of time, passion, and drive. Mentors offer the benefits of experience, teaching, and context. The combination of student and mentor can bring both to new heights. In the world of global surgery, students have banded together to push the movement forward. One such initiative has been the InciSioN Global Surgery Symposium (IGSS) – an annual student-led global surgery conference, and the largest of its kind in the world! Join us in this powerful episode as we explore the inner-workings of IGSS2020, all that it took to make this virtual conference a reality, and the topics of teamwork, inequity, organizational behavior, and overcoming language as a barrier with two of the convenors of IGSS2020 – Dr. Katayoun Madani and Dr. Joffre Guzman!
Dr Katayoun Madani and Dr Joffre Guzman: IGSS2020 Convenors, Chair of InciSioN Global and InciSioN Colombia, Global Surgery Research Fellow.
Grenada/Colombia
“Utilising strengths within a team, Inequity has many forms, Language barriers in research and education”
Dr Katayoun Madani is a Global Surgery Research Fellow at the Northwestern Trauma and Surgical Initiative, in the Division of Trauma and Critical Care at Northwestern University and is concurrently completing her Master’s in Public Health at St. George’s University. She was born and raised in Iran, and moved to the United States where she completed her undergraduate and Master’s of Science in tissue engineering at Arizona State University. Katayoun attended medical school at St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada West Indies, where she co-founded and became the first Chair of InciSioN Grenada. She co-led a large-scale advocacy effort with the Ministry of Health Grenada and Grenada General Hospital to deliver medical devices and supplies to furnish an operating room and intensive care unit. She led InciSioN’s Research Team from 2017 to 2020 and created InciSioN’s research infrastructure, re-established the online Twitter-based Global Surgery Journal Club, and planned the first-ever student and trainee led Global Surgery Session at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress in 2019 held in San Francisco, California.
Dr Joffre Guzman is also a convenor of IGSS2020 and Chair of Incision Colombia. He is a recent graduate from medical school in Bogota, Colombia. Throughout his medical career, he has worked closely with bioengineers in several projects, including a device to remotely monitor patients with Covid-19.