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

Corbin Weaver visits the local grocery store to hear a presentation on pelvic floor disorders, part of the store's health outreach efforts, and marvels at the fact that A) many people seem to have a very foggy notion of anogenital functions, and B) that some also seem to have no inhibitions about bringing up embarrassing bodily foibles in a room full of strangers. Also, Dave points out that sometimes medical research reaches into the past to 'discover' ancient remedies that actually work. So Corbin, Mark Moubarek, Alex Volkmar, and new host Erin Renfrew sample and evaluate some folk- and old-timey prescriptions to see if they have any merit, aside from causing very bad breath and wet, salty feet.

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy's well known TED talk discusses the utility of 'power poses,' and medical students are always looking for ways to feel more powerful.  So Dave challenges Ellie Ginn, Tony Rosenberg, Marc Toral, and Mark Moubarek to give them a try.  Zika remains a force for making people crazy, and Brazil has banned the use of a larvicide incorrectly linked with  Monsanto as a result of a report from a group of Argentinian physicians who advocate for the ban of insecticides.  Tony suggests a better option: mosquito-mesh body suits.  In fact, he's full of ideas, including replacing the traditional family-medicine feces chart, used to help patients discuss their poop with their doctors, with plastinated specimens; and he's considering launching a company that offers fecal transplants from specimens provided by celebrities and sports figures. Also, Wake Forest researchers have 3D printed implantable body parts, including muscle, bone, and cartilage.    A hospital in California has it's data hacked and held hostage, and it pays up $17,000 to get it back. And a certain ambitious 18-year-old, of whom we spoke in Episode 063, is back in the news for opening a clinic and practicing medicine without a license.

Mark Mubarek, Amy Young, Rob Humble and Corbin Weaver are here to discuss the AMA's policy to support the ban on direct to consumer advertising of drugs and implantable devices, and how such advertising makes the doctor-patient relationship complicated. Will drug companies retaliate by advocating for bans on advertising doctors and hospitals to patients.  Researchers in the UK may be about to get the green light to edit the genes of human embryos seeking answers to why some miscarriages happen.  Are we approaching the slippery slope? A neurologist wonders why Ted Cruz's face is so unsettling.  And we note with interest a number of recent public health news stories in which officials suggest that women have the primary role in undesirable health consequences, including Zika/microcephaly and alcohol-related unwanted pregnancies; now South Africa has chimed in by tying scholarships for young women to virginity in order to prevent the spread of HIV. And Dave forces everyone to practice their clinical skills by answering random people's "health" questions from the Internet.

Zika has been in the news, if you haven't noticed, as a neglected tropical disease which has been linked to a frightening surge in birth defects in Central and South America. The response to Zika is going to depend upon the science--which is very much up in the air--along with economic and cultural factors. Chief among those are huge income disparities, population complexities, and limits on access to family planning options. On today's episode, Ellie Ginn, Marielle Meurice, Kevo Rivera, and Jessica Walters meet up with one of the researchers who is fighting this bug. Dr. Selma Jeronimo isn't a household name in the US, but she is becoming one in her home country of Brazil. She is the director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Rio Grande do Norte, and a professor of biochemistry and medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal. Her job is investigating Brazil's endemic diseases. With Zika spread to more than 20 countries including the United States, along with its links to microcephaly, we took advantage of her faculty appointment at the University of Iowa and her long-time collaborations with Iowa faculty and students, to have her on the show.

What can medical students and residents do to keep their chins up during their training? That's what listener Ross--who has noticed the contrast between his happy med student co-workers and his crabby resident co-workers--wants to know. John Pienta, Gabe Lancaster, Jake O'Brien, and Matt Becker consider the question and the advice we gathered from residents. Also, with the news this week that Hawkeye alumnus and former NFL player Tyler Sash, who passed away in September, was a victim of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Jason Lewis joins in to examine the implications. Is football a worthy pass-time or is it a killer of young men? When parents ask their doctors for a sports physical, should their doctors be thinking about the risks? And when docs see kids with injuries caused by their participation in sports, do they need to consider their obligations as mandatory reporters of child abuse?

Dr. Paul Farmer is sort of the rock god of global health.  He’s an incredibly busy and influential guy, so when he flew in from Liberia to spend the entire day here with us at the Carver College of Medicine, it wasn’t easy to keep the stars from our eyes.  Of course, he’s a physician, but he’s also a medical anthropologist, chief of Brigham and Women’s Division of Global Health Equity, professor of medicine at Harvard, and the UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.  One of the things you notice about Dr. Farmer is that although he’s clearly a celebrity in his field, it doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm, idealism, and the pleasure he takes in meeting students who share his passion for understanding and changing how healthcare is delivered to the world’s neediest people.

What’s more, he’s the founding director of Partners in Health, an international non-profit that provides direct healthcare services, research, and advocacy to the sick and impoverished around the world in places like Liberia, Haiti, and here in the US.  So, yes, he has things to do.

All of which is to say that it’s a particular honor that Petra Hahn, Katie Ryken, Josh Bleicher, Jordan Harbaugh Williams, and Greg Yungtum got to chat with him for this week’s show to explore the differences between charity, development and liberation medicine; it’s Dr. Farmer’s emphasis on the latter, and his view that the poor deserve preferential treatment, that makes him such a force in global health.

We need validation. Leave a review: iTunes | Stitcher

[huge_it_gallery id=”65″]

Listen to more great shows for medical students on The Vocalis Podcast Network.

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.

Dave and Emily White, fresh from the University of Iowa Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology's yearly 4Cast conference,  talk about their presentation on the podcast, which was fun.  And they, along with Rob Humble and Doug Russo, talk about the President's recent State of the Union address, including the so-called "moonshot" to cure cancer.  Can that even work?  Rob takes issue with the whole moonshot comparison. Also, Google Cardboard saves a baby after other imaging techniques fail.  A Boston urologist is upset that he's been fired for opposing his hospital's LGBTQ inclusiveness policies which he finds incompatible with his 'biblical worldview.'  Should personal beliefs enter into a physician's practice of medicine? And the Carver College of Medicine's own Examined Life Journal (our literary journal featuring fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) has been released.

John Pienta, Cole Cheney, Amy Young, and newbie Rob Humble join Dave to discuss the recent winter break, the Rose Bowl, and Stanford's half-time band performance.  We discuss doctors who are non-compliant with their own recommendations for patients.  Is that something they should be condemned for, or is it human nature?  And when patients are non-compliant or engage in risky behavior, should docs acknowledge that as normal human behavior and avoid shaming them for it? Also, a Spanish doctor has created a transvaginal speaker to help fetal development, because expecting moms like that sort of thing.  Cole has seen a patient who is concerned about a recent change in their urine's flavor.  He also laments that, because of public health concerns, he can't get a straight-razor shave in Iowa and would like our great state to revisits its legal views on the matter.  And everyone helps Dave flesh out his idea for an endowed chair that would recognize and deflate outsized egos.

John Pienta, Kaci McCleary, and Caroline Sanderson join special guest Frank Canady on this week's show. Frank's here to talk about his recent astrocytoma diagnosis, discuss what he's experienced during treatment so far, and reflect on some of the things he's learned about what patients experience when facing a serious illness. Also, the kiss of death for your research poster may not have anything to do with your research. And John and Dylan Todd (among others) are revitalizing Vital Signs, the on-hiatus medical student newspaper which traces its history to well before Roe v. Wade.

Cole Cheney returns from our state capital, where he's been doing his clerkships at our kind-of satellite campus. He and Kaci McCleary, John Pienta, and Rachel Schenkel talk about the differences between doing rotations in a teaching hospital and doing them in a community hospital. For example, how are community hospital patients different? And in that setting, what does it really mean if your patient is non-compliant? Cole reveals that he's 'afraid' he's going to love psychiatry and wants to know: are other students also wary of the specialty? We talk about the downsides of the field, as well as the rather big professional and caregiving upsides.