Tag Archives: evergreen

Recess Rehash: Sister Helen Prejean: Why Medical Students Should Care About The Death Penalty

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Sister Helen Prejean photo
Sister Helen Prejean Photo by Irish Jesuits

[Here’s a previously posted episode, since Dave was out of town last week.  Enjoy!]

Sister Helen Prejean is a well-known anti-death penalty advocate who has ministered to prisoners on death row. She began her prison ministry in 1981 by becoming pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, a convicted murder who was sentenced to death by electrocution in Lousiana’s Angola State Prison.

Since then, she has witnessed 5 executions and founded the victim’s advocacy group “Survive” in New Orleans. She continues to counsel inmates on death row as well as the families of murder victims. Sister Prejean speaks out against the death penalty through lecturing, organizing and writing, and she is the author of two books on the subject. Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States was an international best seller, and it was developed into the 1996 motion picture for which Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for best actress.

Continue reading Recess Rehash: Sister Helen Prejean: Why Medical Students Should Care About The Death Penalty

Sister Helen Prejean: Why Medical Students Should Care About The Death Penalty

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Sister Helen Prejean photo
Sister Helen Prejean Photo by Irish Jesuits

Sister Helen Prejean is a well-known anti-death penalty advocate who has ministered to prisoners on death row. She began her prison ministry in 1981 by becoming pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, a convicted murder who was sentenced to death by electrocution in Lousiana’s Angola State Prison.

Since then, she has witnessed 5 executions and founded the victim’s advocacy group “Survive” in New Orleans. She continues to counsel inmates on death row as well as the families of murder victims. Sister Prejean speaks out against the death penalty through lecturing, organizing and writing, and she is the author of two books on the subject. Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States was an international best seller, and it was developed into the 1996 motion picture for which Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for best actress.

Continue reading Sister Helen Prejean: Why Medical Students Should Care About The Death Penalty

Recess Rehash: How Residents Cope, and the Costs of America’s Most Violent Sport

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Keep those noggins safe. Photo by USCPSC

Oh, snap.  Our recording last week was nuked by the computer gods.  Here’s a re-run to keep your auditory meatus occupied.

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. Continue reading Recess Rehash: How Residents Cope, and the Costs of America’s Most Violent Sport

Doctors Without Borders, and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention

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John Lawrence, MD
John Lawrence, MD

Dr. John Lawrence returns to the show to talk about MSF, or Doctors with Borders, as it’s known in the United States. Dr. Lawrence has been with the organization since 2009, and is the vice president of its USA board of directors. MSF has played a major role in delivering emergency aid during crises around the world. In 2014, the most recent year for which MSF has published statistics, the aid organization was active in more than 60 countries, most memorably in war-torn Syria and in West Africa with its Ebola outbreak.
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The Twin Epidemics: Our Changing Understanding of Diabetes and Obesity

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A portrait of Dr. Dale Abel and Dr. Miguel Lopez
Dale Abel, MD, PhD (left) and Miguel Lopez, PhD.

Eric Wilson, Aline Sandouk, and Taz Khalid are here to introduce two of the people fighting world-wide epidemics: Diabetes and Obesity. Endocrinologist Dr. Dale Abel is the director of the University of Iowa Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center. The Diabetes Research Center recently invited Dr. Miguel Lopez to come from Spain, where he is a professor of physiology at the University of Santiago De Compostela. He coordinates the NeurObesity research group at the Center for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases; his field of knowledge is the hypothalamic regulation of energy balance. We got to talk to them about the current state of research in diabetes and obesity, and the prospects for a paradigm shift in how we treat them.
Continue reading The Twin Epidemics: Our Changing Understanding of Diabetes and Obesity

How Residents Cope, and the Costs of America’s Most Violent Sport

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nfl photo
Keep those noggins safe. Photo by USCPSC

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. Continue reading How Residents Cope, and the Costs of America’s Most Violent Sport

Dr. Paul Farmer and Liberation Medicine

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"Any serious examination of epidemic disease has always shown that microbes also make a preferential option for the poor. But medicine and its practitioners, even in public health, do so all too rarely." -Paul Farmer, MD, PhD
“Any serious examination of epidemic disease has always shown that microbes also make a preferential option for the poor. But medicine and its practitioners, even in public health, do so all too rarely.” -Paul Farmer, MD, PhD. From left to right: Petra Hahn, Greg Yungtum, Paul Farmer, Katie Ryken, Josh Bleicher, and Jordan Harbaugh-Williams
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.
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Losing the white coat, psych fears, and Internet questions answered

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short-coat-petrie-dish2Cole Cheney returns from our state capital, where he’s been doing his clerkships at our kind-of satellite campus (more about this program specifically is here, if you’re interested). 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.
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Of Advanced Maternal Age

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Okay, old woman, let’s see how baby’s doing, m’kay? Photo by Daquella manera

This time, Kaci McCleary, Lisa Wehr, and Cory Christensen are joined by CCOM alumna Yolanda Villalvazo to talk about what it’s like to have your doctor call you ‘old’ at 39. Two terms are used for moms over 35: ‘geriatric OB patient,’ and ‘advanced maternal age.’ How does that affect moms? How does it affect moms who are physicians, and what are the tensions then between doctor-mom and doctor?
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