The Short Coat: An Inside Look at Getting Into and Getting Through Medical School

Photo by quinn.anya On this episode, M2s Nathen Spitz and Sahaana Arumugam, M3 Emma Barr, and MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk reminisce about simpler Halloween times, when the only thing to worry about was whether your costume was going to be on the sexy branch or the non-sexy branch of the decision tree. Emma gives us her thoughts on why it was a good idea to do her ‘core’ clinical clerk...

Next semester Madi Wahlen will enter the PhD phase of her MD/PhD journey, and the though to that transition makes her kind of nervous. Fortunately, both she and Aline Sandouk were on this week’s episode, allowing space for Madi (and co-hosts Levi Endelman and AJ Chowdhury) to ask Aline questions about her experiences transitioning to the PhD phase. How did she handle the transition? How did...

What you should know about the super hierarchical world of medicine Have you ever wondered what the world of medicine would look like to an ethnographer? To University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Professor Tania Jenkins, perhaps it looks like a ladder of status, from the lowly med student to the exalted attending (and even higher). For her book Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarc...

What having a chronic health issue means to medical students varies…except that it will make them even better doctors. Listener Michael has type one diabetes and “an incredibly rare form” of epilepsy. He’s pretty open about this and plans to use his experience to inform his education on patient care. He got in touch to ask us to discuss chronic health conditions and how the...

We are honored to talk with author and physician Jeff Moody, University of Iowa College of Medicine class of ’92, and urologist, here to talk with us about physician burnout, It’s the topic of his new book The Doctor is Burned Out:  A Physician’s Guide to Recovery. Co-hosts Madi Wahlen, Aline Sandouk, Ananya Munjal, and Nicole Hines talk about ‘wellness,’ the ways that...

Things happen in Iowa. They really do. That’s why Dave put together a little trivia contest for his co-hosts–Sahaana Arumugam, Emma Barr, Aline Sandouk, and Brandon Bacalzo–to test their knowledge of the excitement that is Iowa. But first, we discuss the news that, as alleged by a whistleblowing nurse, a doctor in Georgia has been forcing sterilization on women at an Immigrations...

“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.” Photo by firepile Co-hosts Nathen Spitz, Brandon Bacalzo, Mariam Mansour, and Greta Becker rehash their recent microbiology exam which they say kicked their butts, and how they deal with that nasty feeling. Dave discusses what Naegleria Fowleri means to him. Nathen and Mariam reminisce on their experiences with patient instructors and sta...

Does a physician need to know everything about healthcare, even the *shudder* money stuff? Photo by free pictures of money [Dave was out of the office on recording day last week, so enjoy this rerun!] Physicians go through years and years of school to be great at this calling, so why on earth would anyone want to tack on an MBA, too? Co-host Gabe Conley decided to do just that. He’s been thi...

The UN Relief and Works Agency has a tough job, especially in Palestine. In this bonus episode (recorded prior to the US pa we talk with Dr. Akihiro Seita, the Director of Health and WHO Special Representative to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.  He joins thanks to our Global Health Programs unit and its director Robin Paetzold as well as the University of Iowa Le...

Preference Signaling Tokens may be a way to combat over-applying for residencies, but the schemes have a ways to go yet before they’re ready for prime time. Dear Residency Program: I love you. Do you love me? Check YES or NO!!! Dave noticed something he’d never heard of before: a company offering ‘tokens’ (for a fee) that could be used by residency program applicants to sig...

Listener Shivam wrote to theshortcoats@gmail.com to ask his question: does becoming a DO hinder one’s chances in competitive specialties? MD/PhD students Aline Sandouk and Sahaana Arumugam, M2 Nathan Spitz, and M4 Marisa Evers weigh in, while Dave uses his tiny brain to try and parse the National Residency Matching Progr...

Why was the Hispanic population in Clarion, Iowa seeing so many more infections? Wright County Courthouse, Clarion, Iowa. Photo by Brandonrush (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication) Dr. Michael McLoughlin, internist at Clarion Clinic, was puzzled. Why were 95% of the patients who showed up with novel coronavirus infections Hispanic? And what interventions would best help his...

A study is only as good as its methods, and the #medbikini study wasn’t pretty bad. Maybe you heard:  some researchers tried to help vascular surgeons understand that their social media profiles might contain “unprofessional” content.  Things like wearing swimsuits and swearing and drinking  *shudder* alcohol. Especially by wymmin! Okay, maybe it was better intentioned than that,...

Hippocrates set a high bar. Dr. Danielle Ofri–NYU professor of medicine, Bellevue Hospital internist, and author of great renown–joined us this time to talk about her new book, When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error.  Examining medical errors is a something all good physicians do–sometimes on a stage in front of their colleagues but often surreptitiously. How...

Academic medicine--in which a physician works at a university and may have research and/or teaching duties in addition to patient care--is but one of the fulfilling options available to medical students. What's that lifestyle like? That's the question an anonymous listener (who we'll call Dr. Piledhigh Erandeeper) wanted our help answering. Fortunately we have Miranda Schene and Sahaana Arumugam (...

Does a physician need to know everything about healthcare, even the *shudder* money stuff? Photo by free pictures of money Physicians go through years and years of school to be great at this calling, so why on earth would anyone want to tack on an MBA, too? Co-host Gabe Conley decided to do just that. He’s been thinking about this for a while, but hadn’t pulled the trigger on the idea....

No doubt about it, this road to becoming a physician has financial risks Photo by anathea It feels risky to go to medical school, and for someone with a young family, like our listener who sent us their question to theshortcoats@gmail.com, those risks can feel existential. After all, if things don’t go as planned, the...

Photo by brianna.lehman Listener Soma let us know that the AAMC has released an interview app for medical schools to collect videos of applicants answers to some standard questions. Their website says the tool addresses the needs expressed by its member schools during the upcoming interview season. Soma wondered, what do we think? Of course, that no matter what we think, it seems like applicants w...

Being a physician leaves you no choice–you ARE going to lead. Dr. Brent Lacey is a gastroenterologist who is passionate about helping physicians succeed with business and personal finances. As a physician, he understands how overwhelming it can be to step out of clinical training and into a career, and he has seen firsthand the lack of education on how to run a practice and manage finances....

It feels risky to be wrong…here’s how to get used to that Photo by sk8geek [Don’t forget to share the show with your friends and family–send a screenshot of the share to theshortcoats@gmail.com to get a free thank you gift from Dave!] The Socratic method–teaching using questions–is a big part of me...

Photo by desbyrnephotos [Once again, our circumstances force us to endure mild sound quality issues. Sorry, but that’s round-table podcasting in the pandemic age. You’ll be alright.] We got some lovely responses back from listeners of last week’s show (in which we discussed racism in America and in medicine), including a most important one from Cachae on the best ways to talk to...

Photo by Fibonacci Blue A group of public professionals, infectious disease professionals and community members are pushing back on the common perception that #BLM protests will unnecessarily exacerbate the pandemic. This news leads to a discussion of racism in America. NB: The discussion should speak for itself, but this is the age of internet outrage. So we acknowledge that when it comes to talk...

Logan wrote in to comment on what we call 'box-checking,' the idea that med school admissions committees only want applicants who've done all the best activities and lots of them, and that applicants must participate in activities that "stand out" if they want any chance of getting in. Co-hosts Nick Lind, Aline Sandouk, Emma Barr, and Sally Haeberlin discuss what adcomms really want. Also, we visi...

[Would you like a FREE Short Coat pin made by Dave’s own two hands? Share an episode of SCP online and email a screenshot to theshortcoats@gmail.com!] Listener Christy has several years as a South Carolina emergency department nurse under her belt. But for a while now, she’s been planning to change careers, with her s...

[This episode is brought to you by Pattern. We hope you’ll check out their disability insurance offerings for docs at http://patternlife.com/partner/shortcoat.] As many of us are, The Short Coats–including this week’s M1 co-hosts Nathen Spitz, Maddie Wahlen, and Caitlin Matteson–have been gazing into their cracked crystal ball to discover the new shape of medical school amid the pandemic. In a pre...