Barbara J. Pettitt, MD, MHPE, FACS, is the 2024 recipient of the Dr. Mary Edwards Walker Inspiring Women in Surgery Award.
Dr. Pettitt is a surgeon-educator from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, whose career has combined pediatric surgical care with roles that have advanced education for surgeons in training. Asked to describe her work, she said: “I just touch people one at a time.”
Education and Career
Dr. Pettitt earned her medical degree at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, and completed her residency in general surgery at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, as well as a pediatric surgery fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
With her training complete, Dr. Pettitt joined the Department of Surgery at Emory University, where she is professor of surgery. She also served as the chief of pediatric surgery for the Grady Health System for 25 years. She has held multiple roles related to surgical education, including as the surgery clerkship director for third-year medical students for 22 years and surgery sub-internship director for fourth-year medical students for 14 years. She currently is associate director of the surgery clerkship and the sub-internship and directs the surgery electives program for fourth-year medical students, as well as visiting students and surgical applicant career development programs. In addition, she codirects programs that prepare medical students for internship and teaching. In keeping with this focus, she recently earned a masters degree in health professions education from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago.
As a surgeon-educator, Dr. Pettitt has helped advance simulation-based surgical education, specifically through her contributions to the ACS/Association for Surgical Education’s Medical Student Simulation-Based Surgical Skills Curriculum. Her research has likewise focused on surgical education, including nationwide projects aimed at quantifying successful pedagogical methods.
Dr. Pettit said she enjoys watching novice surgeons attempt the core skills of surgical care, which involves using their hands to cut and suture. “It’s so much fun to watch people try and fail and try and fail and then accomplish,” she added. “Then, what I want for them is to realize is that before the accomplishment came the trying and the failing; so, if you don’t try and fail, you won’t accomplish it.”
Honors
Dr. Pettitt is highly accomplished, and her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Association for Surgical Education Philip J. Wolfson Outstanding Teacher Award, the Association of Women Surgeons Olga Jonasson Distinguished Member Award, as well as the Dean’s Teaching Award and Evangeline T. Papageorge Distinguished Teaching Award—both from the Emory School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Pettitt has been repeatedly recognized by the students at Emory University in receiving the Best Clerkship Director Award, an honor chosen by each year’s graduating class of medical students.
Notably, in 2020, the Emory Department of Surgery named the Barbara J. Pettitt Medical Student Teaching Award after her. This annual award is given to the surgical resident voted best medical student teacher.
The Inspiring Women in Surgery Award is presented annually at Clinical Congress in recognition of an individual’s contributions to the advancement of women in the field of surgery. The award honors the fortitude and accomplishments of Mary Edwards Walker, MD, the first female surgeon to serve in the US Army and the only female recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
