short coat podcast

Parenting Fails, Pro-Life Wins, Free Laser Gifts

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It’s time for a change, whether we want it or not.

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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Emily Silverman, MD, and The Nocturnists

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Emily silverman

A live stage show featuring the stories of healthcare providers is now a podcast.

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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Q&A with Dave Etler, Administrative Services Coordinator

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Chris Diem

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.

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Reactions, Reagents, and Repose

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lab science

How much is lab medicine a part of medical school?

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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Night Float: Finding Mentors, Being a Mentor

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bropoalypse

Mentorship–both giving and receiving–is a crucial part of being a resident

Keenan Laraway
Keenan Laraway

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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Tests, Tact, and Turpentine

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bropoalypse

Everyone gets anxious about tests.  And med school features a lot of tests.

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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The Truth About "Primary Care" Statistics

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bropoalypse

How to Think About Med Schools’ Primary Care Statistics

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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Putting the Anxiety Cart Before the Horse

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bropoalypse

Anxiety about your competitive specialty ambitions in your first year isn’t worth it.

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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Should You Consider Romance When Selecting a Med School?

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bropoalypse

Med school can test a relationship.

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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Another Student Fights Mental Illness Stigma

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bropoalypse

More and more students are speaking up about their mental illness struggles

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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Recess Rehash: Bropocalypse 2017

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bropoalypse

[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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Med Student Parents, Part 2 | Plan for Debt but Don’t Worry

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This time, a mom’s point of view.

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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How Med Student Parents Make It Happen

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Can you be a parent while you’re in medical school?

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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Tales from the Clinic: from Theory to Practice

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There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

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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Refusing to Treat: A Collision of Medicine and Conscience

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Do doctors need protection from having to provide treatments they don’t believe in?

During Human Rights Week at the Carver College of Medicine, we heard some hard truths from national news commentator, human rights activist, and podcaster Angela Rye. In her speech to the College of Medicine, she clued white people in on what black Americans face every day in 2017.  She also pointed out that Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech was just the beginning of his activism.  Meanwhile,  Mackenzie Walhof, Joyce Wahb, Claire Casteneda, and Gabe Conley discuss the department of Health and Human Services announcement that it would be forming a department to protect doctors from having their religious rights infringed. Do doctors need protection so they can refuse to treat as a matter of conscience?  Or do they self-select what they do and don’t do by where they practice and what they specialize in?

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Checking the Boxes: Should You Give Up Your Job To Do Research?

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Sometimes the requirements aren’t required.

Annie wrote in to [email protected] to ask Kaci McCleary, Erik Kneller, Gabriel Conley, and Marissa Evers if she should give up her 10-year job as a radiology tech so she’d have time to do research before applying to medical school. As is often the case with these kinds of questions, the answer is no! But maybe yes. In some cases.

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