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

Research takes time, so what's a realistic outcome for the summer research student? Pipette LeGogettuer (not her real name) wrote in to ask for our input on her summer research plans. Not only is she struggling to come up with a project idea but she has very specific hopes for her outcome--first authorship. Is that realistic? How can she find a project and someone who will sponsor her in their lab? Don't worry, Pipette! Miranda Schene, Danial Syed, Art Thanupakorn, and Mahek Shahid--most of whom have done summer research themselves--have got your answers!

And Dave puts the crew through another of his 'educational' activities, a role playing scenario set in an operating room 100 years in the FYOOOTURE!

This Week in Medical News: In Romania this past December a patient undergoing surgery for her pancreatic cancer caught fire during her operation. And a study in JAMA Internal Medicine has found that old habits die hard, at least when it comes to giving pelvic exams and pap smears to young women and girls.

We Want to Hear From You: What do you think of our advice to Pipette? Do you have a question we can help answer? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, or email [email protected].

On a previous episode, Mason LaMarche discussed a college friend who had a habit of sketching his bowel movements. On this episode, his friend defends his artistic endeavor, while another LaMarche friend writes in with a question about mind over matter. And the gang--Mason, and M2s Emma Barr, Nick Lind, and Sahaana Arumugam--tastes some treats from another land. What does that have to do with med school? I don't know, cultural competency?

This Week in Medical News: JAMA's case study on frontotemporal dementia has implications for us in the Carver College of Medicine's Writing and Humanities Program. And Harvard geneticist George Church is creating a dating app to match people based on genetic compatibility...in other words, eugenics?

We Want to Hear From You: What question do you have about med school, the application process, or your love life? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime or email [email protected]. We love questions!

[Happy Holidays! Dave is on vacation, but here's a re-run to tide you over. We'll be back with new episodes starting 1/16]

We on The Short Coat Podcast like to encourage people to follow their med school dreams in spite of whatever apparent obstacles stand in the way. So when we found out that Jessica McCabe, host of the popular YouTube channel How to ADHD, was coming to the University of Iowa, we were excited to get her on the show. And with co-hosts Irene Morcuende and Kelsey Adler--both successful medical students and ADHD brains--on hand along with CCOM learning specialist Chia-Wen Moon to prove that this obstacle can be just another bump in the road. You may be surprised to hear how those with ADHD brains--and the groups they work in--can actually benefit from their atypical thought processes.

But what kinds of effects does ADHD have in med school? What techniques have worked for Kelsey, Jessica, and Irene? How do relationships suffer and flourish when one of you has ADHD? What are the myths about ADHD that need busting? How can a learning specialist help? And how can medical schools support its students who need the help? All questions we answer for you, Short Coats!

We Want to Hear From You: Do you have ADHD? What about a learning disability? What are you struggling with, and who or what has helped you? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, or email [email protected].

[Happy Holidays! Dave is on vacation, but here's a re-run to tide you over. We'll be back with new episodes starting 1/16]

Short Coat Scribbleson Wordsonpaper (not his real name) wrote a paper for one of his classes, and was told it'd be worth putting it out there for publication. But where, and how? So we asked Writing and Humanities Program Director (and SCP exec producer) Cate Dicharry to give some guidance. Scribbleson's second question, about the lifestyle factors that medical students weigh when making a specialty choice, was a great one for co-hosts Mackenzie Walhof, Miranda Schene, and Abby Fyfe to dig into.

Plus Dave puts on his ten-gallon perfesser hat, offering up a pop quiz on the 2019 Ig Nobel prize winners.

This Week in Medical News: what happens when you want to study pregnancy and other women's health issues? Yeah, your research proposal gets rejected because you didn't include men among your subjects. And an Oregon doctor finds out that he has 17 kids he didn't know about from his time in medical school.

We Want to Hear From You: What factors are you weighing to make your specialty choice? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

This episode comes out the day after Christmas, and is recorded the week before, so we're exploring what some describe as "the most wonderful time of the year," and what others describe as Thursday. Given that recording date, in a bit of time travel Hillary O'Brien, Laura Quast, Jenna Johnson, and LJ Agostinelli share what they want to will have gotten (because time travel is confusing for grammarians) for Christmas. LJ shares her recent experience defending her thesis, Kylie Miller stops by with her cat Mowgli, the gang tries Turkish treats, and Dave forces them to take a pop quiz on Christmas according to unreliable internet sources.

This Week in Medical News

American patients turn to internet black markets to trade, barter, and sell their medicines and medical supplies because that's how great our system of healthcare is. And get ready for home epigenetic testing.

On this bonus episode of The Short Coat, we hear from Dr. John Mrachek. Dr. Mrachek is an anesthesiologist of 17 years who reached out to us at Iowa because he'd long felt a wedge being driven between doctors and their patients. He said that wedge, made of mouse clicks, political meddling, insurance middlemen, patient satisfaction surveys, and annoying electronic health records--was disconnecting physicians from their purpose. And that missing sense of purpose, he fears, is leading them to burn out. It's contributing to a frightening problem: physician suicide. Modern medicine, he says, is in peril.

Among the solutions, Dr. Mrachek feels, is to encourage physicians and students to take inventory of their most memorable patient stories. He argues that this will return to them that lost connection to their work. This talk, given to our first- and second-year medical students and the first he'd given on the topic, is the the beginning of his mission to spread that idea.

We Want to Hear From You: what are you feeling after listening to Dr. Mrachek? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Do all three.

The amazing Dr. Ryan Gray, host of quite a few of the pre-med focused podcasts over at mededmedia.com (of which we, of course, are a member), joins Maddie Mix, Hillary O'Brien, Nick Lind, and Kyle Kinder as guest co-host! Which is good, because we start with a rather difficult topic: should the parents of a profoundly disabled child--who will never be able to care for herself in even the most basic of ways--be allowed to 'freeze' her development so that she remains physically six years old if it will enable them care for her at home? Plus, with the news from our own University of Iowa that surgeons often prepare for surgery by watching YouTube, Dave subjects Dr. Gray and his co-hosts to a YouTube-based health topics pop quiz.

This Week in Medical News: The decline of rural emergency rooms has gone so far as to create a new kind of telemedicine. Crazymothers (no, that's not a slur, that's what they call themselves) want us to stop calling them anti-vaxxers. And month-long birth control may become achievable if you can swallow a six-pointed star about 2 inches in diameter.

We Want to Hear From You: So, what's up with you? Tell (or ask) us anything at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

A question from listener Blake--do we use Anki or Brainscape for studying?--led to a discussion of the various tools and techniques Aline Sandouk (MD/PhD student), Nick Lind, Madeline Cusimano, and Mason LaMarche (all M2s) use to shove medical knowledge into their brains. And the co-hosts get some practice with their patient communication skills using questions posed by Yahoo! Answers users.

This Week in Medical News: MIT wants pics of your poop to train their artificial intelligence with, which is not at all a problem. Hiccups could be a way of teaching babies how to monitor their breathing, an activity that is partially under voluntary control. And the vaping sickness epidemic continues.

We Want to Hear From You: What are your favorite study apps and tools? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Do all three!

Happy Thanksgiving, bishes!

Uh, uh, nope, I’m out. Photo by chumlee10

FYI, there’s new merch for charity (stickers!) at at theshortcoat.com/store! Also, It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States of America, and as we ‘muricans collapse on our sofas replete with turkey with all the trimmings, let us give thanks that M1s Nathen Spitz and Morgan Kennedy, and MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk are here to discuss auto brewery syndrome (or how to be a guilt-free Thanksgiving Day day-drinker if you want your life ruined for years by a real zebra of an illness).

And the gang tries to string together arbitrary medical words into illnesses and breakthrough treatments.

Buy Our Merch and Give At The Same Time

You care about others, or you wouldn’t be into this medicine thing. Our #merchforgood program lets you to give to our charity of the semester and get something for yourself at the same time!

This Week in Medical News

Trauma surgeons at the University of Maryland let the world know that they’re the first in the US to put patients in suspended animation.  And Dave doesn’t understand at all why media outlets are giving a seemingly minor development in aging research–we share some of the features of an important cell replication enzyme with plants, woot!–“breakthrough” status.

We Want to Hear From You

Did anyone in your family embarrass or annoy you on Thanksgiving? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email [email protected].  Do all three!

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The opinions expressed in this feed and podcast are not those of the University of Iowa or the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine; nor do they reflect the views of anyone other than the people who expressed them.  If you have feedback on anything you hear on the show, positive or not, let us know.

Good intentions are everywhere. Good behavior...well, that's more complicated. Such is the case with microaggressions, the term coined by Harvard University psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970 to describe minor yet hurtful comments. Pierce's original definition encompassed statements aimed at African Americans, but of course one can accidentally or purposefully put down any minority individual--women, LGBTQ+ individuals, non-white ethnicities, and more.

Unfortunately, nearly 50 years after Dr. Pierce proposed the term, microaggressions are still a thing. Dave admits to his sins, and M1s Sahaanna Arumagam and Nathen Spitz, along with SCP intern Joel Horne discuss how to prepare for the inevitability of witnessing, experiencing, and committing microaggressions.

Plus, can this week's co-hosts diagnose their weird patients' quirks?

This Week in Medical News: Speaking of good intentions gone awry, hospitals are relying on AI algorithms to direct extra treatment at those who need it, except the AI thinks wealthy white people are needier than African American patients. And researchers announce an effective treatment for 90% of cystic fibrosis patients.

We Want to Hear From You: What are your microaggression stories? Tell us at 347-SHORTCT anytime or email [email protected].