Rising While Falling: Mid-career Invisibility as a Career Advancement and Retention Barrier for Women Clinical Informaticians

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2025 CIC DEI/Health Equity Presentation

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM - 09:00 AM

Abstract Keywords: Leadership Development for Informatics Trainees and Workforce, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Building Value for Informatics via Education and Training, Clinician Burnout, Clinical informatics organizational models
Primary Track: Leadership and Governance
Programmatic Theme: Leadership, Advocacy and Policy

Mid-career invisibility occurs when highly qualified women are disregarded, ignored, or fall out of the career pipeline even as they rise in professional stature. The phenomenon results from the intersection of numerous well-documented micro- and macro-inequities; additionally, even if women in their early career receive professional accolades and attention, that intentional support may wane towards mid-career. Ambiguous feedback, vague promotion criteria not aligned with responsibilities, low institutional support for leadership advancement, increased burdens of unsupported citizenship tasks (with accompanying risks of being on “stairs to nowhere” rather than “escalators” to leadership roles), experiences of microaggressions, bias, or harassment, and often being primary carers for family members including aging parents, are all contributing factors to mid-career invisibility.
Unfortunately, little research describes the experiences of midcareer invisibility for women of intersectional identities; furthermore, there is no known information on the experiences of women clinical informaticians in a discipline (informatics) that involves boundary-spanning roles which frequently require wearing multiple professional “hats.” transitions across various sectors (e.g., academia, industry, government, non-government, and/or additional sectors) often occur in the career of an informatics professional; the relationship of such career transitions to women clinical informaticians’ mid-career experiences and potential invisibility is not known. After an initial introduction to the core topic of this panel, each panelist will share their lived experiences, reflections, and tips for overcoming common contributors to mid-career invisibility.

Moderator:
Tiffany Leung, MD, MPH, FACP, FAMIA, FEFIM
JMIR Publications

Speakers:
Rebecca Mishuris, MD, MS, MPH
Mass General Brigham

William Hersh, MD, FACMI, FAMIA
Oregon Health & Science University

Victoria Tiase, PhD, RN, NI-BC, FAMIA, FAAN, FNAP
University of Utah

Deepti Pandita, MD, FACP, FAMIA
University of California Irvine

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