The Short Coat Podcast 
Listener Meghan is about to start med school in the fall, and is thinking about what sort of regular habits medical students like Aline Sandouk, Tony Rosenberg, and new co-host Jayden Bowen use to keep them on track. Not only do we look at some routines they use (and debate whether they’re even helpful), but we also have a suggested routine for the new student.
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Her snacks were delicious, but you’ll never guess her secret ingredient. Irisa Mahaparn, Tony Rosenberg, … Read more
Spoiler alert: don’t “prepare” during the summer before you arrive at medical school. Listener Amanda … Read more
Our own Claire Castaneda won first place in the Carver College of Medicine’s Carol A. Bowman Creative Writing Contest for Medical Students, and her piece caught Dave’s eyes and heart. She talks with Aline Sandouk, Melissa Chan, and Tony Rosenberg about the dynamics of family strife and the pressure they can exert to follow one career path over another. Meanwhile, Aline expresses her feelings on being left behind by her original classmates as she continues her MD/PhD studies.
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Oh, gosh. It’s Kaci McCleary and Amy Young’s last show as co-hosts. Irisa Mahaparn and Teneme Konne join them to discuss their impending moves to Colorado and Minnesota. Also, they lament Iowa’s new Fetal Heartbeat Bill and what some observers believe will be an associated collapse of OB/Gyn in Iowa should the law go into effect. But life goes on, and Amy–a relatively new parent–talks parenting fails. Luckily for her little Sammy, and sadly for his own children, Dave has her beat. And listener Corey reaches out on Facebook to tell Dave he’s wrong. Shocker.
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The day-to-day of internship, residency, and an MD career doesn’t allow much time to process the effect it’s having on the practitioner. Rushing from one patient to the next, putting out the fires even while drinking from the firehose, and being selfless in service to the patients’ needs means that one’s own stories are buried, neglected. More and more, however, medicine is acknowledging the need for practitioners to examine and tell their stories so that they can learn from them, teach their lessons to others, and show colleagues that they are not alone. In 2015, Dr. Emily Silverman was in her second year of her internal medicine residency at UCSF. She found herself with a little more time following her frenetic intern year, and with her own stories that had gone untold and unexamined. She started to write, first in a blog she called The Nocturnists. Then, in 2016 she organized the first live storytelling session with her colleagues.
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By Jacob Adney, MD Candidate, Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Mr. Dave Etler is an Administrative Services Coordinator at University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. He is also co-host of the Short Coat Podcast, which discusses the current events, social aspects, and people in the thrilling and exciting torrent that is the medical field. He was born in Massachusetts, raised in Falmouth on Cape Cod, and is the intensely proud father of two and husband of one.
Remembering a recent episode in which we spoke briefly of colored test tubes, Adee writes in with a question for Hilary O’Brien, Erik Kneller, Mackenzie Walhof, and Rob Humble—what, if anything, do medical students learn about laboratory science? And we got a lot of feedback on our recent discussion of unwanted sexual attention from patients, all of it pretty good! Which is nice…thank you, listeners!
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By The Short Coat Podcast Do med students get training on how to deal with … Read more
Keenan Laraway, MD
Short Coat Podcast veteran Keenan Laraway, MD (CCOM ’15, Internal Medicine), returns to the microphone to give his insights into one of the most important parts of residency–finding and being a mentor. As you listen, note how much credit he gives to his mentors for their influence on him, and how much emphasis he gives to teaching medical students himself. Medical residency (and undergraduate medical education, partially) operates on an apprenticeship model, in which the experience and advice of one’s colleagues is integral to one’s own development. Seeking out those relationships is therefore vital.
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The news that students at Oregon Health and Science University will now be subject to ‘compassion tests‘ in order to graduate got Dave thinking about test anxiety. As schools pile on the examinations, how do students deal with the stress? Dabin Choi, Gabe Conley, Claire Casteneda, and Erik Kneller discuss meditation, sleep, prayer, and eating habits that keep them from letting the fear derail them.
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Listener Lavender BloodPoison (not their real name) sent us a message saying they were impressed by CCOM’s Primary Care residency match statistics. And while many schools that serve states like ours do love primary care, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics,” as the saying goes. How should one interpret match statistics in light of the fact that many who appear to match in primary care will go on to specialize after their first year residency? Lisa Wehr, Teneme Konne, Aline Sandouk, Amy Young, and Kaci McCleary are here to drop some truths about the so-called “Dean’s Lie” (less a lie as much as it is a truth that doesn’t tell the whole story).
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Listener Luis wrote in expressing his anxiety that his med school–which he’ll begin attending this fall–doesn’t have the prestige or programs to support his desire for a competitive specialty like ophthalmology. If that’s the case, he wondered, what can he do to increase his chances of obtaining his dream career? Fortunately for Luis, Irisa Mahaparn, Gabe Conley, Brendan George, Jason Lewis, and new co-host Andres Dajles were on hand to give Luis the advice and encouragement he needs…and a tiny dose of tough love, too.
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Lauren wrote in to ask us to what extent her love life should play a role in her selection of a medical school, and how we thought med school challenges relationships. Gabe Conely, Joyce Wahba, Claire Casteneda, and new host Brendan George discussed their perspective on how med school can affect romantic relationships, and what role it should play in the selection of a school to attend.
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Listener Mo wrote to us at [email protected] to ask us if a lack of interest in dealing with the foibles of patients–with their anti-vaccine beliefs, their non-compliance with treatment, and reliance on the latest internet fads–means he should reconsider his med school dreams. Lucky for Mo, Kaci McCleary, Irisa Mahaparn, and newbs Melissa Chan and Dabin Choi were on hand to propose some paths forward for non-empathetic med school applicants, as well as outlining some of the less obvious areas empathy comes in handy they might want to think about. There isn’t a lot of wiggle room in this area…but there’s a little, and maybe Mo can squeeze into those cracks and come out with an MD on the other side.
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One of the things we Short Coats agree on is that the stigma medical students and physicians face when dealing with mental illness must end. We are people, too, and thus are subject to the full range of human maladies. So when listener Kate reached out to [email protected] to tell us of her University of Michigan classmate Rahael Gupta’s JAMA article addressing her own struggles, Matt Wilson, Marisa Evers, and Gabe Conley could only respond with sympathy and admiration.
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[Dave had the flu on recording day, so we’re posting this awesome episode from the recent past. Enjoy!]
Dave found himself hosting with another group of women, so what better time to talk about #MeToo and the powerful people being taken down by their sexual harassment and abuse of their less-powerful victims? Erin Pazaski, Hillary O’Brien, Laura Quast, and Liza Mann weigh in on why this seems to have staying power in the news cycle, and why it seems to destroy some powerful men and not others. Plus, since this is a group of friends who, through med school, have come to know each other well, Dave challenges each to answer questions as their friends would.
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On our last show, we fielded a question from Courtney who wants to go to med school but is worried about being a mom and a med student. We got one dad’s perspective then, and now it’s time for mom. Dr. Maya Lopez (CCOM MD ’04) was another non-trad entering school with a supportive husband and a few bundles of joy. She told Eric Schnieders, Tucker Dangremond, and Sanjeeva Weerasinghe how she dove headlong into med school, how she and her husband (along with a village) made parenting and med school work for them.
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Listener Courtney, a 26-year-old mother of three wants to know if her med school dream is even possible. Obviously this is a two-part question since there are both moms and dads to consider, so we’ll have a mom on a future show to help. But first, Gabe Conley, Marissa Evers, Joyce “Spicy” Wahba, and Kaci McCleary invited 2004 CCOM grad Dr. Tom McNalley on the show to represent the dads. Tom was 39 with three kids of his own and a wife who was working towards her PhD when he entered med school. We’ll find out how they did it.
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Kylie Miller and Issac Schwantes take a break from their fairly new clinical duties to let Gabe Conley and Erik Kneller know how it’s going working with actual patients. What unexpected things have they learned? Were their professors really correct when the said that arcane bit of information would actually be useful in the real world? Were their fears (whatever they were) realized? Would they rather grandma puke every time they broke wind, or have a shingles outbreak whenever they get a passing grade or better in medical school? Dave assures them: these are the questions listeners want answers to.
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