Real MD

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 unique opportunity to learn by working alongside community health workers.

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 also talks about his love of academic medicine and improving professional identity development of residents. Lastly, Mark talks about how being a drummer makes him a better physician.

This week’s episode features guest host Savannah Gelhard. She is a third-year medical students and serves as a RealMD facilitator. Savannah had a chance to sit down with fellow third-year Erik Tokita. He was driven to medicine by a desire to help those in his community. Throughout medical school, he has focused on balancing the rigorous workload with enjoying life and having fun with his classmates through memes.

This week’s episode of the RealMD podcast features Dr. Sara Wikstrom. She is an internal medicine physician and faculty member at the U of U and strong advocate for students and residents. In this episode we talk about her journey and connections she made to medicine. She also shares how she navigated choosing a specialty.

Dr. Susan Sample has dedicated her career to creating spaces for narrative in medicine. She has a PhD in Communication and directs the Initiative in Narrative, Medicine, and Writing at the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Utah Health Sciences. She is assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and Writer-in-Residence at the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI). In this episode, we talk about what narrative is, how it fosters self-knowledge, and the value of hearing stories as well as writing your own. She also shares her journey into narrative medicine and affirms as stated by Dr. Rita Sharon that Self-knowledge is “the physician’s most potent therapeutic instrument.”

As we gear up for Season 3 next month, we are posting throwback episodes from the first season (formerly called: Unleashing the Doctor Within) that started it all. In this episode, Sam and Bridger interview Christina Tushman and Shira Kaplan about conflict management in medical leadership and medical education. They share their insight working with a large network of medical schools across the country. We talk about the importance of communication for working effectively with teams and succeeding in medicine.