Tag Archives: Dwiju Kumar

Andrew Solomon, and Parents Raising Unexpectedly Different Children

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The Carver College of Medicine’s conference on the intersection’s between the humanities and medicine was fortunate to book author and psychologist Andrew Solomon as its featured presenter this year. Solomon is an activist and philanthropist in LGBT rights, mental health, education and the arts.

Andrew Solomon, PhD

His latest book, Far From the Tree, is an exploration of families coping with the differences between the parents and their extraordinary children: deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender.

These stories are courageous in their telling, as are the families who opened themselves up to Dr. Solomon over the eleven-year course of writing the book. Ultimately, they led Dr. Solomon to understand his own identity, and helped him with his decision to have his own children.

Students Rachel Press-Goosen, Eric Wilson, and Dwiju Kumar sat down with Dr. Solomon to discuss the book and find out more about the struggles and triumphs these families experienced.

Listen to Episode 031: Andrew Solomon, and Parents Raising Unexpectedly Different Children.

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.

A real life Dr. House: Gurpreet Dhaliwal

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All our listeners are familiar with the archetype of the master diagnostician, probably best represented in pop culture by Dr. Greg House, the irascible, pill-popping doctor of the eponymous television series.  Every week, House put together the clues and discarded the red herrings to come up with a diagnosis that only he could have thought of.  It’s a great trick, and there are people out there who can really do it.  Some even do it for their peers, at grand rounds that are akin to displays of medical prestidigitation.

Dr. Dhaliwal does an unknown case presentation for medicine residents.

But it’s about more than tricks.  For instance, in April of this year, a Hopkins review of 25 years of malpractice claim payouts found that diagnostic errors—not surgical mistakes or medication errors—made up the largest fraction of claims, the greatest harm to patients, and the highest total payouts: almost $39 billion during that time.  All this despite the common practice of defensive testing, in which tens of billions are spent each year on unnecessary tests in the hope of protecting doctors from the possibility of lawsuits.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.  Among Dr. Dhaliwal’s professional interests are clinical reasoning, diagnosis and diagnostic errors, and how physicians can improve in those areas.  He is also much less angry, and students Eric Wilson, Dwiju Kumar, and Alison Pletch found him a lot more fun to talk to, than Greg House.

Listen to Episode 027 – A real life Dr. House: Gurpreet Dhaliwal.

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.