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Court: Top orthopedic docs at Mass. General may have been a grumpy lot, but they didn't discriminate against a young woman surgeon

The US Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a jury verdict dismissing a young surgeon's sex-discrimination suit against Mass. General, ruling that it saw nothing wrong in the jury's decision or in a judge's decision to bar some of her claims because she waited to long to sue under the federal statute of limitations.

Dr. Nina Sherwin, at one time an orthopedic resident at the hospital, sued after she was dismissed from the program, alleging the doctors had it in for her after she complained about a conflict with a male resident.

Last year, however, a federal jury ruled in favor of Partners HealthCare - Mass. General's holding corporation - and said Sherwin lost her position because of her performance as a surgeon.

The appeals court agreed:

As this case illustrates, there is a certain rough-and-tumble quality to the high-stakes world of academic medicine. Here, however, the jury heard a welter of conflicting evidence presented by able lawyers and determined, after a fundamentally fair trial, that the defendants' conduct - though perhaps insensitive in some respects - did not cross the border into the forbidden realms of discrimination and retaliation. In the absence of prejudicial error (and we have found none here), we have no license to substitute our judgment for that of the jurors.

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Comments

I worked in orthopedic research and in orthopedic oncology, worked for a surgeon, and interacted with a number of surgeons and residents in that department as part of my job.

It was mostly male and male-led, yet very supportive of the efforts and aspirations of women. Support for cultivating women's careers came from the top down. It was a very refreshing change from when I worked in engineering.

Note that Shervin was there some years after I left and after Henry Mankin retired, so I can't say if the climate changed. I doubt that it changed much, as I did work with those who took over.

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Dr. Mankin was an incredible Physician and leader. I would say that as the Pittsburgh crowd got more comfortable at MGH, they put their own stamp on the department. That is natural. It became less personal and more businesslike. But that was inevitable in health care anyway wasn't it?

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