I was delighted to visit Stryker headquarters in Mahwah New Jersey again in December for their annual Women in Orthopaedics meeting. It is such a fabulous opportunity to network with some of the brilliant female orthopaedic surgeons and residents from both America and Europe. It is also a great opportunity to meet some of the amazing women in engineering too and this year we collaborated on some work on ergonomics during knee replacement surgery. I had the opportunity to see the new Mako 4 robot and the upcoming software improvements that accompany it, as well as speaking about robotic assisted partial knee replacement in the breakout groups.
Knee and hip surgery remains very male dominated, but the numbers are shifting as we attract more and more women into what is such a rewarding surgical specialty. Though in the UK only 2.5% of knee replacements are performed by female surgeons, the orthopaedic workforce in Scotland is changing to better reflect the patients we treat and more and more women are entering orthopaedic training. We discuss this and other issues facing women in orthopaedics in our recent Bone and Journal Editorial: “The Lady Orthopaedic Surgeon”. It is now our job as women in arthroplasty to show them all how awesome a career in joint replacement surgery is!