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

This week our expert medical news analysts, John Pienta, Marc Toral, Greg Woods, and Amy Young, discuss why Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli is so hated, given that capitalist enterprises have profit as their overarching goal--hasn't he just done his job?  Meanwhile, two ongoing clinical trials have been experimenting on human subjects without consent. Those subjects: residents and their patients.  The experiment: what happens if hospitals return to the longer hours that prevailed for residents before they were restricted in 2011? We explore consent, residents' satisfaction with their working conditions, how many residents may not feel that restricting their hours is best for the patients, and what working and being a patient at an academic medical center means.

Second-years Kaci McCleary, Marc Toral, Corbin Weaver, and Aline Sandouk are about to finish their didactic studies in the curriculum and embark on their clinical clerkships! At long last, they get to work with patients. Among the questions they face: is it better to put yourself out there during clerkships? Or keep your head down? And are they nervous? Maybe a little, but there was plenty of health news this week to distract themselves with, including a Harvard study that provides evidence that one's stress and one's health may be unrelated.

Even though Dave's in NYC, he still finds a way to call it in (pun intended) for a show with Kaci McCleary, Corbin Weaver, John Pienta, and Jason Lewis. The myriad definitions of pizza are covered, as well as other more consequential things, including the possibility that most medical abstracts are at best wishful thinking and at worst fraudulent. And speaking of research, physicians finally get it together to petition congress to start treating gun violence as a fundable research topic for the CDC.

This time, Dave is on vacation, but John Pienta, Aline Sandouk, Cole Cheney, and Kaci McCleary didn't let that stop them. Thanks to Intern Cory, they were able to carry on without him (*sniff*). Kaci and Aline review their first year: was it fun? I bet you know the answer to that one. How did it change them? What did they discover during the experience? How did they cope? What choices did they make, and how did that affect their well-being? And John and Cole clue them on what they'll face next year.

This Thanksgiving, why not enjoy a Cthurkey while you contemplate the many health hazards embodied by America's favorite celebration of gluttony?  And if you are a future radiologist, you might be as demoralized as Ellie Ginn, Tony Rosenberg, Dylan Todd, and Kaci McCleary were to learn about a UIowa/UC-Davis study that finds pigeons are just as good at it as you'll ever be.

Lisa Wehr, Kaci McCleary, Dylan Todd, and Marc Toral discuss things of much import, such as why Dave's iPad lock screen is a pile of potatoes, and why it's important to use the correct pronunciation of gyros but not other ethnic foods.  Also, uterus transplants are about to become a thing surgeons do in the US.

Rosenberg, Alex Volkmar, and Doug Russo indulge their Star Wars geekery with Dave, entertaining the various Internet theories of Luke's and Jar Jar's importance, while Ellie Ginn sits in the corner wondering what they're talking about. Rosenberg, Alex Volkmar, and Doug Russo indulge their Star Wars geekery with Dave, entertaining the various Internet theories of Luke's and Jar Jar's importance, while Ellie Ginn sits in the corner wondering what they're talking about. Meanwhile, the crew discuss their "Early Clinical Experiences" and how great they were...except possibly for Tony's.

Cory has found something to enable Dave's plan to hang a portrait of himself somewhere in the medical school, which leads (somehow) into a discussion of Corbin Weaver's deep loathing for visitors of the Louvre and Kaci McCleary's similar feelings for commercial art. And Corbin shares with Kaci, Marc Toral and Dylan Todd a very special experience she had with a patient that really enabled her to experience a patient's point of view...from about floor-level.

New York Presbyterian and Columbia decide to get out of family medicine, so they abruptly closed their FM residency program...three months after a new class of residents began working there. Meanwhile, Dave teaches Marc Toral, Tae Kim, and Kaci McCleary about what physicians used to do to memorialize their patients: use their skin to bind books about their conditions. So that's nice. Meanwhile, the FDA is considering the first prescription video game. And Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli's amazingly awful business plan to take an inexpensive generic drug and charge a boatload of money for it blows up in his face when another company undercuts his price by $749 per tablet.

John Pienta has an profound moment with a patient, one which crystalized for him a sense that he's doing exactly the right thing in his life. Meanwhile (being full of profundity this week) he brings Marc Toral, Dylan Todd, and Corbin Weaver good news--that we are not alone in the universe. Maybe...Marc's not buying it. Whatever, science boy, this changes everything.