Real MD

Eli Bunzel is a fourth year orthopedic resident who helped start the RealMD program. It is so great to stay connected to former students who made RealMD possible. In this episode, we reminisce about the early days and also how the program impacted his own journey. Eli talks about navigating the hurdles of medical school by remembering his strengths and nurturing deep relationships with mentors who...

Mike Aldred is one of our House Advisors and a long time member of the Student Affairs Team. One thing is for certain, Mike loves working with medical students. In this episode he talks about the process of finding yourself. Both in the context of his own journey into education and his work helping students find their own career path. For Mike, it always comes down to knowing and applying your str...

I have been cheering on the side lines for Maci Winn ever since she started medical school (I of course cheer for all our students.) I love Maci’s story, she is an MDPhD student and competitive weightlifter. I have been inspired by her ability to pursue two things she loves and how she is willing to both try and accept failure in order to do so. In a profession like medicine, we need more of this...

For this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Gretchen Case. Her career is fascinating and shows us there are more opportunities and pathways than we think there are, if we can broaden our thinking. She is committed to an interdisciplinary education through her work as Director of the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities, as a faculty member in internal medicine, and t...

Dr. Andy Smith is a clinical care pediatrician, faculty member, and course director at the U. He is also a great, authentic human who you won’t forget after meeting. In this episode, we talk about how he built his career but I think curated is a better word. He did this through a variety of experiences as an EMT in Chicago before medical school as well as helping Aids patients in Malawi and amazin...

This episode of the RealMD podcast took place at the AAMC national Learn Serve Lead conference in Seattle this past November. I get to talk to one of my greatest collaborators, colleagues, and friends, Shira Kaplan who is the Director of Leadership Programs at the AAMC. We discuss why leadership development is so important during medical school and how institutions can get started. This episode is...

Joseph Grenny is a mentor and friend. His work as a researcher, author, and business owner has helped countless professionals level up their abilities to lead teams, navigate conflict, and influence change. In this episode, we talk about his career path, two of his books (Crucial Conversations and Influencer), and thinking at scale which means having a belief or calling that as individuals we can...

Elorm Avakame is a wonderful pediatrics fellow, colleague, and friend. I am lucky to work with him each year at the RISE conference. I will let him introduce the specifics about himself. This episode is about mindset and also keeping who you are, the natural abilities that you see early in life alive in the current work you are doing. In Elorm’s case his experiences in athletics transfer into the...

Drs. Adam and Emily Spivak are the definition of making life and career work. I will not use the word balance because that is not how medical careers work, but, making space for each other and their passions as well as their family is their way of making it all work. I loved talking about their career paths and life in general. Most of all my takeaway was the value of tuning into past experiences...

Medical school moves very fast and it is great when we can take a moment and process the experience. In this episode, I sit down with second year medical students, Blake Findley and Alizah Folau, they also both serve as RealMD leaders. We talk about what it’s like for them right now in med school, how their reasons for pursuing medicine have evolved, keeping their “why” alive, and a national confe...

This episode is a rebroadcast of an interview from the AAMC's Learn Serve Lead Conference in Nashville last November, 2022. It features a conversation between Dr. Adina Kalet, the Director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Dr. Tom Hurtado from the University of Utah.

Dr. Adam Stevenson serves as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah and as a Pediatrician at Primary Children’s Hospital. Adam talks about his journey into medicine, how he has been at U since medical school, how he navigated the unexpected, and became an educator as well as an amazing mentor/coach. Having navigated his own stru...

Storytelling is a basic need and central to community building. Medical education can be pretty selfish in that people have to focus on building themselves, but being a medical care provider is fairly selfless in that you're caring for whomever might come before you. RealMD brought storytelling to the University of Utah to create a space to practice some of the listening that medicine requires...

Dr. Sara Stern wears a lot of hats and enjoys having a wide of variety of roles. In addition to being a Pediatric Rheumatologist, she is a faculty member, researcher, and RealMD coach. She also recently took on a new role as faculty co-director professional identity formation. In this episode, I love how she talks about taking risks to grow and Navigating dark spots to create the life she wants. I...

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing two founding members of the Utah Medical Orchestra, MS4 AnnaLeah Larson and MS3 Heather Smith. The MSO, as they call it, is a rapidly growing volunteer orchestra composed of students, professionals, and staff in the healthcare community in Salt Lake City who hold large scale performances each semester and also perform as ensembles for patients. In this...

Dr. Katherine Anderson is a geriatrician who advocates for her patients and a developer faculty, she knows how to build people up. In this episode, she shares light bulb moments throughout her professional journey including how she “fell into” her specialty, how she navigates being a “yes” person, and how she goes about setting life goals. I was struck by the wisdom she receives from her patients...

Dr. Francis Filloux is a pediatric neurologist and faculty member at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah. In recent years, Dr. Filloux has become an amazing RealMD coach and loves working with students as they navigate the inevitable uncertainties of medicine. He treats students like they are family. I think this is the take home message from our conversation. As yo...

Today’s episode features Erica Rojas. She is a colleague of mine who I really appreciate working with. Erica wears a lot of hats at the school of medicine including her roles as a learning specialist in the academic success program, Associate Director of the PROMISE2U  program, and teaching multiple undergraduate courses all while pursuing her PhD in education and being a mother. What stands...

Dr. Shipman is a first year physical medicine and rehabilitation resident and one of our RealMD alums. In this episode, we picked up right where we left off covering a lot of ground. But a central theme of building trust both in yourself, with patients and your health care team stuck out to me. Hank talks about a life changing car accident he went through as a teenager and how it led him to findin...

Trisha and I had a great conversation about life as a medical student and staying grounded. We covered a lot in our interview but what struck me is her wisdom including the connection her life purpose has to her family, creating authentic relationships, learning how to lead, and bringing her culture including all intersecting identities with her wherever she goes. I hope you enjoy this conversatio...

This week's episode of the RealMD podcast features first year medical student, Shi Liang. I have loved getting to know Shi over the past few months. In this episode, we talk about why he is pursuing medicine, finding community, overcoming failure in his life, and what he hopes for students in his class. He also expresses an overall desire to relieve suffering. This idea of relieving suffering is c...

It is the end of the year and a time when many people naturally review the past year and think about what they want in the future. Frequently, I get asked by students and colleagues about self-reflection and what it means to have a regular practice. So I brought in the person who has had the greatest impact on me and my own inner journey, Tony Tsai. He is the director of Leadership and Career Deve...

This week’s episode features Dr. Ivette Lopez. She earned her PHD in population health and from the moment she began her journey, she knew that everything she does from research to outreach would be for the benefit of the diverse and vibrant communities she has served for past three decades. Dr. Lopez tells her story of finding meaning in her career and talks about how our medical students have a...

This week’s episode features Dr. Mark Harris. He serves at the University of Utah as the Associate Dean of Graduate Medical Education, Associate Chief Medical Officer, and Designated Institutional Official of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. We discuss his journey as a first-generation medical student in Glasgow, Scotland to coming to the US and switching specialties. Mark...

Dr. Kyle Bradford Jones is an Associate Clinical Professor in Family and preventative care at the U of U school of medicine. In 2020, after three years of work, he released the book: Fallible: A memoir of a young physician’s struggle with mental illness. We talk about his journey as described in the book, his efforts to destigmatize mental illness for medical students, and debunk what it means to...