Ep 6: Women In Medicine: Breaking Barriers, Changing Medicine
Women in Medicine.
September is the American Medical Association's Women in Medicine Month, and host Kris Rimbos marks it with two fetal surgeons at opposite ends of the same career. Dr. Diana Farmer helped invent the field — thirty years in, the only woman in the room when fetal surgery was still a crazy idea, and the person who wrote the grant that became the MOMS trial because she wanted to protect the women undergoing these operations. Dr. Kathy Bligard came up a generation later, into a fetal center that was already thriving, and is now mentoring the person behind her. Two routes into the same operating room — and the same threads running through both.
The episode in five numbers
Meet the voices
Tap any card to flip for a full bio.
Host
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Kris Rimbos, MS, RNC-OB, C-EFM, NE-BC, FAWHONN
Host of The Fetal Frontline and a long-standing member of the Fetal Therapy Nurse Network. Kris helped build FTNN's web presence and social channels, served as Membership and Publications Chair, and spent her career in women and infant services, including at a major US fetal center.
Across this season of The Fetal Frontline, she sits down with the clinicians behind fetal care — nurses, social workers, surgeons, and the wider team — drawing out the day-to-day realities of a specialty most listeners have never seen up close.
Guest
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Dr. Diana Farmer, MD, FACS, FRCS, FAAP
Dr. Farmer trained as a pediatric surgeon — four years of medical school, a few years overseas in Singapore, five years of surgical residency, three years of research training in cell therapy, then two years of pediatric surgery training. Her fetal work began in San Francisco in the 1980s, when fetal surgery "was just an idea in people's minds," and continued in Detroit, where she was involved in the first stem cell therapy for bubble-boy disease.
She was mentored by Dr. Michael Harrison — the father of fetal surgery, and the guest on Episode 4 of this podcast — and wrote the initial grant for what became the MOMS trial, the first randomized trial in fetal surgery. Thirty years into the field and now a department chair, she has spent her career as, often, the only woman in the room.
Guest
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Dr. Kathy Bligard, MA, MD
Dr. Bligard is a maternal-fetal medicine physician and fetal surgeon. Her training ran medical school, a four-year OB/GYN residency, and a three-year MFM fellowship. Rather than a traditional fetal intervention fellowship, she did what she calls an apprenticeship — an additional year alongside one of her mentors as she started her career. She has been in independent practice for four years.
She got interested in medicine watching her brother's physicians care for him after a diabetes diagnosis, and scheduled her OB/GYN clerkship first precisely because she was certain she would hate it. She fell in love on day one on labor and delivery. Today she takes care of diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure in pregnancy, and has inherited — and is now mentoring a junior partner into — a thriving fetal center.
Why a woman in the room changed this field
Not a symbolic argument. Four concrete things that happened because women were — or weren't — at the table.
Breaking barriers.
Both guests were certain they would never do OB/GYN. Both spent their careers caring for pregnant patients and their babies. In between: mentors who opened doors, doors that didn't open easily, a discipline of understanding the natural history of a disorder before acting on it — and a specialty built, slowly and carefully, by people willing to be first.
Chapter guide
Sixteen chapters, each with a pull-quote and the three things worth walking away with. Tap "Open deep dive" to unpack the context — the ethics of a brand-new field, why the MOMS trial happened, and what burnout actually is.
How a field got built
Thirty years of fetal surgery, told through the story Dr. Farmer lived — eight turning points from a crazy new idea to a standard of care.
Who opened the doors
Neither guest got here alone. Six people and places that made the difference — named, in their own words, across the conversation.
On having it all
Kris asks both guests the hardest question in the interview — whether they ever had to choose. Four answers, from two very different decades. Tap through each.
Asked how she advocated for her own health in a culture that reads any step back from the OR as a lack of dedication, Dr. Farmer laughs.
The advice she got in college — and still believes.
Dr. Bligard's answer, a generation later, is a surprise.
The one thing she wishes she'd seen sooner.
A surgeon's playbook
"That is the weight we carry. And we don't teach that very well."
Two episodes ago, a fetal care nurse gave this podcast its language for secondary traumatic stress. Here a surgeon of thirty years arrives at the same phrase, unprompted — and argues that burnout has almost nothing to do with hours. Seven principles that run through both guests' answers.
"It's you now."
What a mentor said to Dr. Bligard when he left for a chair position elsewhere. "And I was like, okay — am I ready? And he's like, you are." She had never been fetal-surgery-or-bust; it simply came about, because someone saw it in her and made room. She is doing the same for the person behind her now, and her spina bifida team is all women. The lineage is the point.
Looking forward
Four threads from the close of the conversation — what's driving physicians out, what would keep them in, and what both guests would tell a student. Tap through each.
Not work-life balance. Asked how to keep women from leaving surgery, Dr. Bligard reframes the question entirely.
"That's not necessarily a problem unique to women in medicine"
- The real driver is the industrialization of medicine — physicians with less and less say
- Not enough time in clinic, not enough resources — "I just don't feel like I have the time to help the patient like I need to"
- Formalized leave policies through the GME and ACGME side have genuinely helped
- "Healthcare should not be a money-making endeavor" — keep the lights on and take care of patients
Dr. Farmer's diagnosis of the American system, in one line.
Why she's still optimistic about the next phase.
To the medical student wondering if there's room for her.
A place at the table
Kris closes on the women who came before, the women standing beside, and the women who will lead us forward. "To the women listening who are considering a career in medicine, surgery, or fetal care — there's a place for you at the table. And if there isn't a seat, perhaps you're meant to build one."
Share these moments
Three short clips from the conversation — tap to play, or download to post on Instagram, Facebook, or wherever you share. Send one to a trainee, a colleague, or a young woman deciding what to do with her career.
Thanks for listening.
If this conversation resonated, share it with a colleague, a trainee, or a young woman deciding what to do with her career. Success, as Kris puts it, isn't measured only by the procedures performed or the research published — it's measured by the people we inspire and the opportunities we create. Subscribe so you don't miss the next conversation on The Fetal Frontline.
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