Raise the Line

Exercise is good for you, except in very specific cases when it isn’t. One of the few examples, post-exertional malaise (PEM), is the subject of today’s Raise the Line episode in our series on post-acute infection syndromes produced in collaboration with the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illnesses at Mt. Sinai. “The key to understanding PEM is that it's not just fatigue. It's real...

It’s hard for many to believe a tick bite or case of COVID can lead to severe mental illness, but we’ll be hearing from someone on this episode of Raise the Line who lived through just that experience. Dr. Raven Baxter also happens to be the host of this special series on post-acute infection syndromes produced in collaboration with the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illnesses at M...

“I think education is very much of an artistic process. I love to think of this as kind of being in a museum. It's about curation of an experience,” says Alex Kendall who oversees the physician assistant training program at Emory University. As he takes on the role of director, Kendall’s background in art and anthropology give him an interesting perspective from which to build on and realize the p...

Why do patients with long COVID have such a wide array of symptoms affecting so many bodily systems? That bedeviling question is the focus of this episode of Raise the Line featuring Dr. Resia Pretorius, head of the Department of Physiological Sciences at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and a renowned researcher in coagulation. “The underlying concept of what is happening, in our minds, is...

In a word cloud generated from this episode of Raise the Line, ‘communication’ would dominate: communication between the immune system, nervous system and connective tissue; communication between patients and providers; and communication among providers to solve challenging diagnostic puzzles. As our special series on post-acute infection syndromes continues, host Raven Baxter of the Cohen Center...

If we didn’t know Dr. Brian Ogendi, we might be concerned about someone being able to pull off a residency and two fellowships while being a father of two young boys, but we do know Brian through his work with our Osmosis Medical Education Fellows (OMEF) program in which he played a major role while earning both his MD and MBA degrees. In other words, we’re not worried. Host Hillary Acer checked i...

Diagnosing Post-Acute Infection Syndromes: Special Series from The Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illnesses at Mount Sinai “Tick-borne illnesses are incredibly stealthy and complicated and if I wasn't living and breathing it every day and seeing the intensity of these symptoms in patients, I would never believe it,” says Shannon Delaney, a psychiatrist in private practice in New Yo...

Today, we add another voice to our ongoing conversation on Raise the Line about how to improve the nurse staffing crisis faced by the US healthcare system. That voice belongs to Bhavdeep Singh, founder and CEO of Global MedTeam, a startup focused on bringing foreign-born nurses to the US to fill staff shortages. When Singh, who has deep experience in healthcare management, learned from a hospital...

Today, we’re excited to bring you the first episode in a special Raise the Line series that Osmosis from Elsevier has created in partnership with the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illnesses (CoRE) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. PAIS: Root Causes, Drivers, and Actionable Solutions is a ten-part examination of a range of post-acute infection syndromes such...

For those proponents of psychedelic-assisted therapy concerned that demand for therapists will outstrip supply in the coming years, you may be reassured by today’s conversation with Dr. Ingmar Gorman and Dr. Elizabeth Nielson, psychologists who have been involved in FDA-approved clinical trials of MDMA and psilocybin, and the co-founders of a company called Fluence Training which is working to sca...

Part of why we love bringing Raise the Line to you is we get to introduce you to creative, committed people who see challenges in the healthcare system as opportunities to improve it.  Today’s guest, radiation oncologist Dr. David Grew, is a perfect example. In the depths of COVID when his patients had to meet with him unaccompanied by a support person, he realized his ability to help people under...

“Maybe we think we’re just students and we’re just learning, but you can have an impact as a medical student,” says Dr. Desiree Franco Lugo, who has acted on that insight throughout her recently completed journey at Anáhuac University, Mexico and during her participation in the Osmosis Medical Education Fellowship, where she has served as a Regional Lead for the past two years. Des, as we’ve come...

Promising research, a growing respect for the patient voice and innovative ways of using technology to support patients might be adding up to a new reality of Alzheimer’s and other dementias being experienced as chronic diseases like some cancers are now considered to be. We’re going to learn about that trend and other positive developments in the space on this special episode of Raise the Line wi...

“There is a revolution at hand in which, after years of struggling to locate a new source of organs, there may finally be an answer and to everyone's surprise it is animal organs. Pigs may save the day,” says Dr. Andrew Cameron, chief of the Division of Transplantation at Johns Hopkins Medicine. While he’s encouraged by recent progress in using genetically-modified pig organs in humans, Cameron po...

Today’s Raise the Line guest has a simple but powerful message for medical providers, born of a mother’s heartbreak. “It's going to be rare in your career to meet a zebra but the impact you can have is phenomenal. An early diagnosis could make the difference between life and death for these children,” says Bethan Keall who lost her young daughter Matilda (Tilly) in 2022 to neuroblastoma, a rare ca...

Today, we're continuing our close look at clerkships and residency programs and what students can do to be successful in them with Dr. Sharon Bord and Dr. Amelia Pousson, who are both physicians and assistant professors in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where, as most listeners know, Osmosis co-founder and Raise the Line host Shiv Gaglani is pursuing his third year of medical scho...

Medical school is so demanding that it’s always impressive to meet students who make time for other activities, and doubly impressive when what they devote their precious free time to is intended to improve healthcare.  That’s why we’re delighted to welcome Drs. Lawsen Parker, Rebecca Wolff and Stephanie Koplitz to Raise the Line today.  As they were wrapping up their terms as leaders of the Stude...

Today’s guest is a trailblazing surgeon who performed the first successful nerve allograft, among other important achievements, but that’s actually not what host Shiv Gaglani wanted to focus on in this interview with Dr. Susan Mackinnon. After seeing her speak recently at a Johns Hopkins Grand Rounds presentation, Shiv immediately asked her to be a guest on Raise the Line because of her passion to...

There are more than 2,600 colleges and universities with nursing degree programs in the United States, offering a mix of options from associate-level degrees to doctorates. Ensuring that those programs deliver high-quality education is the focus of today's guest, Kathy Chappell, PhD, RN, the CEO of the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, also known as ACEN. “We have this regulatory...

When Raise the Line host and third year medical student Shiv Gaglani witnessed the creation of a “heart song” at the bedside of a terminal patient during his recent neurology clerkship, he immediately wanted to know more about the clinical applications of music therapy and realized the Osmosis audience would want to as well.  That’s why we’re happy to bring you this fascinating episode featuring S...

We've had the pleasure of speaking to nursing leaders at a variety of health systems and at nursing schools on past episodes of Raise the Line , but today we're going to zoom out for a big picture perspective on the profession and its current and future challenges and opportunities with Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, RN, MBA, president of the American Nurses Association, which advocates for the nat...

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After working alongside healthcare providers in under-resourced countries, today’s Raise the Line guest Dr. Rebecca Weintraub came to see that the desire to serve patients and the curiosity to learn how to be the best clinician possible are universal, but the best tools to do so are not.  That’s what led her to launch the Better Evidence program at Ariadne Labs which designs, tests and scales data...

As we’ve learned on previous episodes of Raise the Line , people dealing with rare diseases usually wait 4-7 years before receiving a diagnosis, during which time their condition can deteriorate significantly. Shortening this “diagnostic odyssey” is the mission of today’s guest, Lukas Lange, and in an interesting twist, he’s doing it by involving the patients themselves.  The company he co-founded...

We've devoted quite a bit of time on Raise the Line to learning about persistent workforce shortages in human healthcare and what is being done about them, but as yet have not turned our attention to the fact that veterinary medicine is facing the same headwinds. To find out more about how that challenge is being addressed and to learn about other current issues in veterinary medicine we turn toda...