Social Rounds

Family medicine is one of the most misunderstood specialties in medicine. In this episode of Social Rounds , Tony Chin-Quee, Frances Mei Hardin, and Ryan Montoya tackle the biggest myths surrounding primary care—from physician salaries and burnout to diversity in medicine, side hustles, chronic disease management, and what family medicine is actually like in practice. They also play a new game, "S...

Can you trust a plastic surgeon who isn't attractive? Is it safe to travel abroad for cosmetic surgery? Should your surgeon say "no" if your expectations aren't realistic? This week on Social Rounds , Frances Mei Hardin, MD and Tony Chin-Quee are joined by newly graduated plastic surgeon Dr. Liz Malphrus for an honest (and hilarious) conversation about the biggest myths surrounding plastic surgery...

What does it take to walk away from a successful medical career and start over as an archaeologist? In this episode of Social Rounds, Tony Chin-Quee and Frances Mei sit down with archaeologist and former nurse practitioner Katie Chin-Quee to talk about one of the most unconventional career pivots you'll ever hear. Katie shares how years of practicing medicine led her to pursue archaeology, what it...

Were the doctors you know always this weird? This week on Social Rounds, Tony, Frances Mei, and Ryan take a trip back to childhood and revisit the nerdy obsessions, social disasters, and formative experiences that shaped them long before medicine entered the picture. From comic book collecting in the 1990s to Pokémon encyclopedic knowledge, musical theater fandom, bug collections, dictionaries at...

What happens when a surgeon says yes to a random yoga retreat in Mexico and meets the person who will change his life? In this special (and surprisingly wholesome) episode of Social Rounds, Tony and Frances Mei are joined by Tony's wife, Katie Chin-Quee, a former nurse practitioner turned archaeologist, to share the story of how they met, fell in love, navigated long-distance dating, and built a l...

A graduating medical student publishes an essay called Medicine Without Merit , arguing that DEI initiatives have undermined fairness, lowered standards, and discriminated against white men in medicine. Tony and Frances Mei dive into the article, unpacking its claims about merit, admissions, standardized testing, diversity, and representation in healthcare. Along the way, they explore why conversa...

This week on Social Rounds , Tony and Frances Mei slow things down for a more reflective episode. After weeks of guests, chaos, travel, and controversy, they get back to basics — talking about Europe, ghosts in Rome, getting robbed in England, leaving the UK for Canada, and the question at the center of the episode: Was medicine really all bad? From funny patient encounters and late-night residenc...

A fourth-year medical student goes viral for offensive videos targeting women’s health, and the internet exploded. In this episode of Social Rounds , Tony Chin-Quee, Dr. Ryan Montoya, and Dr. Janet McMordie unpack the controversy, the rise of medfluencers, professionalism in medicine, and whether physicians should be held to a higher standard online. The trio dives into the blurred line between pe...

This week on Social Rounds , Tony and Frances Mei are joined by fan-favorite “Cartographer Geoff” — historian, mapmaker, professional forager, jam-maker, and accidental proof that people can actually enjoy their jobs. What starts as a conversation about whether children should follow their parents into medicine spirals into a surprisingly deep discussion about maps as instruments of power, colonia...

What do the NFL, brain damage, and fart tracking have in common? More than you’d think. In this episode of Social Rounds , Frances Mei Hardin and Tony Chin-Quee are joined again by writer and comedian Joel Walkowski to break down two wildly different, but oddly connected, stories: the long-term consequences of head trauma in contact sports, and the surprisingly scientific world of human flatulence...

What happens when burnout, trauma, and “just getting through the week” collide with alcohol culture in medicine? In this episode of Social Rounds , Frances Mei Hardin and Tony Chin-Quee sit down with writer, comedian, and sobriety facilitator Joel Walkowski to unpack a question most physicians never ask out loud: Do we all need an intervention? From “forgetting juice” in residency to the normaliza...

This week on Social Rounds , we’re joined by returning fan favorite Dr. Kate Buhrke—rogue agent of chaos and resident philosopher—to answer a deceptively simple question: can philosophy actually make the pain of medicine make sense? What starts as required reading quickly spirals into a full-blown debate on utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and whether the system of medical training is justified sim...

No Frances Mei this week, so Tony brought in reinforcements. Dr. Janet McMordie (now appearing on network medical drama Doc ) and Friend-of-the-Pod, Dr. Ryan Montoya join Social Rounds for a wild, behind-the-scenes look at where medicine and entertainment collide. This episode starts chaotic and somehow escalates: Tony casually reveals he won $25,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire … Janet breaks...

This week on Social Rounds , we’re asking a question every trainee eventually faces: Is it okay to be the bad guy? After a chaotic start (April Fool’s, pranks, and moral debates on roasting vs. psychological warfare), we get into something deeper—leadership in medicine. Inspired by a satirical Hippocratic Collective piece, Bad Guy’s Corner , we unpack: The difference between being tough vs. being...

This week on Social Rounds , we take on one of medicine’s favorite lies: that you’re supposed to know exactly who you are, and what you want, before you even become a fully formed adult. Inspired by a Doximity op-ed telling students to “choose specialties based on their future selves,” we ask a more honest question: What if that’s impossible? We break down: Why “know yourself in your 20s” is funda...

Match Week is over—and now real life begins. This week on Social Rounds , we’re talking about what actually matters after the envelope opens: moving, money, and the mistakes nobody teaches you to avoid. From renters insurance (non-negotiable) to the reality of the “30% rule,” we break down the practical advice we wish someone had given us before residency. We also get into: Why financial literacy...

In this episode of Social Rounds , Frances Mei, Tony, and Ryan Montoya tackle one of the most uncomfortable—but universal—realities in medicine: disrespect from patients . From inappropriate comments to outright racism, they share real stories from training and practice, including moments that stayed with them for years—and how they learned to respond. This episode covers: What to do when a patien...

In this episode of Social Rounds , Tony Chin-Quee, Frances Mei Hardin, and friend-of-the-pod Ryan Montoya dive into one of the wildest stories we’ve ever heard: a month-long artist residency in a French chateau that slowly descended into chaos. Ryan shares what it was like living with 27 artists from around the world—waking up to croissants and champagne in the French countryside while creating ar...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Kate Buhrke, DO , we pick up where her story left off — inside the realities of surgical residency. Kate shares what happened after transferring programs, the culture shock of moving from a county hospital to a private practice environment, and how speaking up about resident conditions quickly labeled her a “problem resident.” What started as advocacy for fairnes...

In this episode of Social Rounds, Tony and Frances Mei sit down with Dr. Kate Buhrke — rock climber, former ortho gunner, and unapologetic regime-builder. Kate shares her journey from growing up in suburban Illinois (not Chicago, according to Tony), to climbing hundreds of feet without ropes, to eating, sleeping, and breathing orthopedic surgery… and then not matching. They talk about: The identit...

This week on Social Rounds , Frances Mei and Tony bring back Outside Baseball with three wild medical stories you can’t make up. First: a woman delivers her baby in the back of a Waymo robo-taxi. Is the surveillance state helping… or creeping us out? Then: doctors warn that your favorite claw clip could cause serious head injuries in a car accident. Fashion vs. safety — where do we draw the line?...

It’s that time of year again. Rank lists are due, anxiety is peaking, and medical students everywhere are trying to reverse-engineer “the algorithm.” In this week’s Social Rounds, Tony and Frances Mei break down the residency Match—from the “big computer in the sky” to the chaos of SOAP week—and share what actually matters when you’re ranking programs. Frances Mei opens up about not matching, the...

This week on Social Rounds , Tony Chin-Quee takes on his most unhinged role yet: hostile interviewer. In a special Social Rounds Book Club episode, Frances Mei Hardin sits down for a deliberately uncomfortable, occasionally inappropriate, and deeply revealing mock interview ahead of the release of her debut memoir, Surgeon on the Edge . What starts as a Groundhog Day cold open quickly devolves int...

What does medicine look like when the next generation refuses to be broken by it? In this episode of Social Rounds , we’re joined by Shay Taylor Allen , a fourth-year medical student at Howard University, class vice president, and future anesthesiologist—whose journey took her from working as a hospital janitor to interviewing for residency in the same system she once cleaned. Together, we talk ab...

This week on Social Rounds , Tony Chin-Quee is joined by fan-favorite guest host Joan Chan, MD for a wide-ranging, wildly unfiltered episode that somehow connects vaccines, cocaine-addicted founding surgeons, and prestige gay hockey television. First up: a much-needed PSA on flu shots, herd immunity, and why “you can still get sick” is not the dunk anti-vaxxers think it is. From there, Tony dives...