The MDM

Strong Mentorship emboldens people to take smarter risks.  A national study of 30,000 college graduates found that alumni who had “a professor who cared about me as a person and a mentor who encouraged my goals” were nearly twice as likely to be engaged in their work and 40% more likely to be thriving in overall well‑being. So, for this second episode in our mentoring series, I am so excited to sh...

The ACGME is planning to add a year to Emergency Medicine residency training.  Emergency medicine stands at a crossroads.  Should EM residency training be standardized at four years? On the show today are three Emergency Medicine residency program directors.  Together, we discuss the history of 3- vs. 4-year EM programs, the evolving demands of emergency medicine, and what a fourth year could mean...

We've built a system that uses ChatGPT to grade your students’ medical notes.  We are publishing our code under an MIT open license with a description of how you can build a similar system at your own institutions. This is the first of a two-part series talking about this system.  This interview was recorded 6 months ago!  in April 2024, so you can see just how far we've come from then u...

In 2003, the ACGME, the accrediting body for residencies, created limits on how much residents could be required to work.  80 hours a week, a maximum of 28 hours of continuous duty per shift, at least 8 hours off between shifts, and a mandatory 4 days off a month. When you say it out loud, it’s kind of insane that these were the limits, right.  How much more could you work? We’re now 20 years out...

When does sacrifice become exploitation?  When they strip you of your health insurance because you asked to get paid an average wage.  In this episode we go inside the University of Buffalo Resident's strike. Of the 830 residents in their union and 93% of them voted to allow a strike. In the interview we talk through the arguments, the negotiations, the intimidation, and the lawsuits (plural)...

John Morgan served as the Chief Clinical Innovation Officer at Virginia Medicaid from 2020-2024 and is now the medical lead at Waymark, a company that provides free, community-based care for people enrolled in Medicaid programs. John will work directly with Waymark’s community-based teams and provider In the interview, we talk about his experience grappling with the ethical and financial considera...

Jessica Adkins is an Emergency Medicine physician and a Harvard Health Policy and Social Emergency medicine Fellow.  Melissa Puffenbarger is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician. Both women had miscarriages in the last 6 months and because they live in Kentucky, they couldn't get Mifepristone, which is the standard of care, and both suffered consequences.  We walk through the history, saf...

Joe Finney is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine and EMS physician. He is the medical director of the Missouri EMS-C and host of the Pediatric EMS Podcast. In this episode, we talk about what it's like to practice medicine at the limits of Evidence-Based Medicine, what it’s like to start a career in Academia, and why hosting a medical podcast is literally the most important thing one can do.   **...

Deepa Mokshagundam is a pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant cardiologist who has dedicated her career to advocacy and public policy. This episode is the first in an ongoing series about the socio-political tensions in medicine, and we begin by laying the foundation of advocacy. In this episode, Deepa describes her career as a health advocate and lobbyist, and how to get started with advocacy,  ...

Bryan Sisk is a pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist and studies the intersection of communication, ethics, and the new technologies that are making their way into medicine.  He is the author of “ An Overarching Framework for the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Pediatrics ,”  which was published in JAMA Pediatrics in January 2024.   This episode is the first in an ongoing series about Artificial...

Amy Holthouser is a former Associate Dean for Medical Education.  In this episode, she walks us through some of the seismic shifts in medical education from her ten years running a medical school. We’ll explore the controversial transition of the USMLE Step 1 to a pass/fail system amidst a backdrop of pass/fail medical school courses which has left medical schools without a way to incentivize thei...