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Winter Break, Guts and Brains, and Yahoo! Answers

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And all through the house…

answers photoIt’s winter break at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.  For most people, that means there are a couple weeks to relax and rejuvenate their minds, bodies, and familial relations.  Despite a lack of available co-hosts, The Short Coats never take a break, which is why Dave had to invite fellow student affairs staffers Chris Roling (Financial Services) and Kate McKenzie (Admissions) to  join MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk and physician assistant student and noob co-host Paul Kretkowski on this week’s show.  To give Chris and Kate the full experience, we visit with the fine patients at the Yahoo! Answers Doctor’s Office to hear and answer their questions on concussions, nail gun injuries and impressive DIY treatments, and the potential dangers of floor pizza.

This Week in Medical News

Our humble state of Iowa is home to a new effort to create nanovaccines for influenza which promise to eliminate many of the current vaccine’s downsides while increasing its effectiveness.  More evidence that the gut and brain are intimately linked. And the scandal of the CDC’s banned words might have been a trifle overblown.

We Want to Hear From You

Have something you want us to talk about on the show? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  Do all three!

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Short Coat Podcast

Sacrifice It All to be A Med Student? Don’t Do It!

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Med School Requires Sacrifice…but not of everything.

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Photo by Andrew Turner

Listener Arman  is starting school this fall, and is feeling something many do at the start of this journey: that in order to succeed, he’ll have to do nothing but study.  Will he’ll have to sacrifice his outside interests to succeed? Kylie Miller, Matt Wilson, Teneme Konne and Patrick Brau admit that medical students love to talk about how hard it is and how much time they give to their new lives.  To be sure, sacrifice is a part of learning to be a doctor.  But they do have reassuring words for those who worry their identities are about to be ransacked.  Plus, Yahoo! Answers leave us with more questions than we started with…like, did the fruit fly regain consciousness?

This Week’s Medical News…

We also discuss a study from Sweden that looks at whether drones can deliver life-saving automatic emergency defibrillators to heart attack victims faster than EMS can get to them.  And we explore the power of names to get you to eat your vegetables.

We want to hear from you.

If you have fears to be assuaged, and think we are the best people to do so, give us a call! Call us at 347-SHORTCT any time, and email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

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Self-Doubt and Riding the Ethical Railroad

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Photo by SMU Central University Libraries
One of our podcasting goals is to encourage others to create their own shows, especially medical learners.  So John Pienta, Irisa Mahaparn, Adam Erwood, and Erin Pazaski were pleased to hear from listener Terel, who got it and launched a podcast of her own!  Go, Terel!  Although perhaps she and her fellow pre-meds should (not) consider the path taken by another undergrad, who decided to skip all the pesky applying and test taking and just declare herself a medical student so she could jump right in and start seeing patients.  On the other hand, if you worked hard getting your MD, and made all the sacrifices medical education requires, then getting married to your degree may be something to think about.   As often happens to medical students, Irisa confesses she’s having to learn what to think about herself when she doesn’t get tippy-top grades in her classes…and she worries that if she had to help someone give birth on a train, surely no one aboard would survive.  And Dave offers his co-hosts some practice at answering health questions they might really hear someday, which he pulled from the saddest place on the internet: Yahoo! Answers.  Listeners, share your thoughts with us each week.  Call us at 347-SHORTCT any time, and email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

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Short Coat Podcast

Compassion Isn’t Easy

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Photo by Half Chinese

Compassion fatigue is a problem for many practitioners. In medicine, some of the needs are so great, and the resources are often so finite. Aline Sandouk, John Pienta, Rob Humble, and Kaci McCleary discuss what happens when caring itself becomes a limited resource, the reasons empathy can dwindle, ways to cultivate it, and the role that compassion can play in caring for oneself.  We also learn what monks and nuns are teaching us about how compassion manifests positivity and even neural plasticity.
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Recess Rehash: Here’s Lemons In Your Eyes

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You shall pay. Photo by ezhikoff

[Since Dave and the Writing and Humanities Program was putting on an art-and-medicine conference last week, we’re posting this rerun.  Enjoy!]

Dave helps Mark Moubarek, Amy Young, Rob Humble, and Corbin Weaver to practice their clinical skills by  answering random people’s “health” questions from the saddest place on the Internet. But first we 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?

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Short Coat Podcast

They have questions, we have…more questions.

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Photo by CamEvans

Dave, John Pienta, Mark Moubarek, Matt Maves, and Levi Endelman are aware that the world is full of questions.  Nowhere is that more true than on the saddest place on the Internet, Yahoo! Answers. There folks ask the kinds of things that a primary care physician might have to answer.  Is removing a layer of skin with a razor a good way to get rid of acne scars?  What could be the cause of blisters on one’s lips after kissing one’s dog?  How much milk should one use in one’s bath?  There are no stupid questions.

But first, since Matt has returned from a year in Des Moines doing clerkships there, we discuss what that’s been like and the benefits of doing some clerkships outside a more academic setting.  We also discuss the psychiatric disorder pica and the kinds of things people swallow on purpose (or by accident).  Also we talk about drug maker Mylan’s difficulties with, well, everyone after we collectively realized they’re gouging patients who need epinephrine auto-injectors to keep themselves alive.  Meanwhile, a company is offering a supplement that its CEO, a pioneering MIT aging researcher, and it’s Nobel-prize festooned board of scientific advisors say might just be a way to extend the human health span.

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Short Coat Podcast

Abolishing Step 2, Self-Electrocution to Treat Boredom, and More Answers to Internet Questions

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:47 — 76.6MB)

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What is that, a mariachi band? Photo by University of Michigan MSIS

Recording on the eve of match day, Marc Toral, Amy Young, Matt Becker and new co-host Taz Khalid discuss a petition by Harvard medical students to abolish the USMLE’s Step 2 clinical skills exam as it’s too expensive, ineffective, and a waste of effort. Among our team, however, opinions vary.  And why no discussion on abolishing Step 1 (the test of basic science knowledge and concepts) on similar grounds?
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Short Coat Podcast

Here’s Lemons In Your Eyes

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:22 — 63.7MB)

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lemon eye photo
You shall pay. Photo by ezhikoff

Dave helps Mark Moubarek, Amy Young, Rob Humble, and Corbin Weaver to practice their clinical skills by  answering random people’s “health” questions from the saddest place on the Internet. But first we 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?

Continue reading Here’s Lemons In Your Eyes →

Short Coat Podcast

Guns and Research

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Why are people shooting up the place? I guess we can never know! Photo by Martin Laco Photography

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. We discuss the possibility that most medical abstracts are at best wishful thinking and at worst fraudulent. And speaking of research, physicians get it together to petition congress to start treating gun violence as a fundable research topic for the CDC.
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