Tag Archives: Aline Sandouk

Chronic Conditions in Medical School

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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 they interact with medical school and the patient experience. We were lucky enough to find a few medical students to offer their own journeys for discussion to cohosts Emma Barr, Aline Sandouk, and newbies AJ Chowdhury and Alex Belzer.

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How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

The Doctor is Burned Out ft. Jeff Moody, MD

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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 med students and physicians look at medicine and medical education that contribute to burnout, like the dangers of maximizing everything you do and a reliance on external metrics for success, why some specialties are more likely to have burnt out docs than others. Dr. Moody also encourages us to understand our own value to the system–in dollars–as a way to ask for solutions for burnout. He encourages us to remember that our lives effect burnout, too–docs and students aren’t exempt from adverse childhood experiences, divorce and other stressors of life! And of course, we talk about his prescription for how to fix burnout if it happens to you.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Flyover Country? Far From It!

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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 Customs and Enforcement detention center. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but we note with concern how America treats incarcerated people. And we discuss Brandon’s research experience on a horse tranquilizer’s potential as treatment for psychiatric disorders.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Recess Rehash: MD/MBA: Why Physicians Must Know More About Business

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Does a physician need to know everything about healthcare, even the *shudder* money stuff?

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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 thinking about this for a while, but hadn’t pulled the trigger on the idea. Then, as he was about to become a fourth-year medical student, SARS-COV-2 came along and gave him a nudge in the right direction. Gabe explains why he thinks it’s vital to understand business principles as a physician–and it’s not just to make more money.

And Dave prompts Gabe and his fellow co-hosts Aline Sandouk, Brandon Bacalzo, and Madi Wahlen to answer some conversation starters. As a result, some conversations were started and we all learned a thing or two.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

“Preference Signaling” –the Future of Applications?

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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 signal their love for particular programs.  The general idea is to combat the common applicant strategy of applying to as many residency programs as possible to be sure  the applicant gets a match.  While this strategy is quite reasonable from the individual applicant’s perspective, it causes problems for both programs and the general body of applicants because those extra applications flood programs with candidates that may not actually be interested. 

Then he found out that the Otolaryngology Program
Directors Organization will be doing something similar, and Aline Sandouk, Eric Boeshart, Emma Barr, and Nicole Lacina explore a analysis of who wins and who looses in such a scheme.  

Plus Dave creates an educational game to help students plan how they’ll react to common odd situations.  And by educational, he clearly meant “educational.”

We Want to Hear From You

Do you think Preference Signalling is a good idea? What if medical schools adopts the idea?  Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a kick to hear from you!

does a DO Degree Ruin your Speciality plans?

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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 Program’s statistics to find an answer.

Photo by chaddavis.photography

The gang considers whether it would help their anxiety to adopt an alter ego to overcome their anxiety surrounding upcoming events. Then Nathan clues them in to the defacing of the famous George Floyd mural in Minneapolis by a medical student. All that and a smattering of Ellen Degeneris news–is she cancelled?

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How’d we do on this week’s show? Are we cancelled because we angered you? Or did we do okay in the discussion? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  Then, call home. They miss you.

Putting on your #MedBikini

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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, but join Aline Sandouk, Eric Boeshart, and Ananya Munjal as they explore the ideas and the execution behind this now-retracted ‘study.’

Listener Logan wrote in to theshortcoats@gmail.com to ask why he’s getting the impression from the questions on his secondary applications that there is a divide between specialties and service.  

And Ananya talks about her recently launched arts journal for medical learners, The Appendix. It’s not just for CCOM students, either! Any health science student can join the fun!

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

When Doctors Do Harm ft. Danielle Ofri, MD

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Hippocrates set a high bar.

A portrait of Dr. Danielle Ofri, Author of When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error

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. However, “mistakes were made” simply isn’t acceptable to most patients and lawyers. Meanwhile, the shame felt by practitioners who make mistakes is not only unhelpful but hinders their development and can contribute to burnout and depression.   Because of the consequences of shame are so dire, Dr. Ofri argues in her book that confronting mistakes in a humane, understanding, and open fashion is vital. 

Not many years ago, a headline grabbed her attention:  medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States.  How can that be? she wondered.  If people were dying at that rate, wouldn’t physicians have noticed this earlier?  Of course, it turns out that the story of medical error is much more complicated than that headline would lead one to believe, and set Dr. Ofri on the path to this latest book.  Join MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk, M4 Marisa Evers, M2 Jessica De Haan, and M4 Anne Nora for this discussion on the sources of error, the causes, and the ways to understand and learn from the inevitable.

We also discuss her and her colleagues’ experiences fighting COVID-19 in New York City and learning about the disease in real time.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

MD/MBA: Why Physicians Must Know More About Business

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Does a physician need to know everything about healthcare, even the *shudder* money stuff?

money photo
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. Then, as he was about to become a fourth-year medical student, SARS-COV-2 came along and gave him a nudge in the right direction. Gabe explains why he thinks it’s vital to understand business principles as a physician–and it’s not just to make more money.

And Dave prompts Gabe and his fellow co-hosts Aline Sandouk, Brandon Bacalzo, and Madi Wahlen to answer some conversation starters. As a result, some conversations were started and we all learned a thing or two.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

the activities Admissions Committees Love to See

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Whatever will the neighbors think?! Photo by Teresa Trimm

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 visit Yahoo! Answers for those odd questions we love so well. Shouldn’t docs carry tranquilizer guns?


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This Week in Medical News

Half of Americans don’t plan on getting vaccinated for SARS-COV2 when a vaccine becomes available to them. And many Americans are experiencing major symptoms of anxiety and depression.

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