It’s time for a change, whether we want it or not.
Oh, gosh. It’s Kaci McCleary and Amy Young’s last show as co-hosts. Irisa Mahaparn and Teneme Konne join them to discuss their impending moves to Colorado and Minnesota. Also, they lament Iowa’s new Fetal Heartbeat Bill and what some observers believe will be an associated collapse of OB/Gyn in Iowa should the law go into effect. But life goes on, and Amy–a relatively new parent–talks parenting fails. Luckily for her little Sammy, and sadly for his own children, Dave has her beat. And listener Corey reaches out on Facebook to tell Dave he’s wrong. Shocker.
Plus, Dave reveals how you can get free swag Dave made with frickin’ laser beams…listen to find out how.
If you’re a future OB, are you concerned about or celebrating Iowa Republicans’ strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com. Continue reading Parenting Fails, Pro-Life Wins, Free Laser Gifts→
Mark Shrime is an otolaryngologist (and American Ninja Warrior competitor) who may just be on the leading edge of change in the way global health sees surgery. In this conversation with Tony Mai, Amanda Manorot, Brian Wall, and Hadeal Ayoub, Dr. Shrime argues that the way surgery is used in international development to date–surgeons fly in for two weeks, do their thing, and fly back out–doesn’t do much to allow their host countries to develop their own surgery skills. For his part, he’s managed to arrange his work at Harvard to allow him two months abroad helping to strengthen health systems in countries like Congo, Haiti, Cameroon, and Madagascar.
The problem is, policy-makers see surgery as ‘too expensive,’ disregarding it as a tool for global health intervention. Ebola and Zika therefore get all the attention. But analysis of the cost-effectiveness of surgery as a tool in global health efforts belies this view, and shows the burden of surgical diseases may be as high as a third of the global total. Fortunately, Dr. Shrime has good advice for future surgeons who face a system that embraces Relative Value Units as a measure of physician performance, and yet want to pursue work outside their hospitals to effect global healthcare change.
We Want to Hear From You
What are your thoughts on the effort to elevate surgery as a global health intervention? Any thoughts on who we should interview next? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com to share your ideas.
Medical school admissions committees look for clinical experiences on applications, so it behooves premeds to seek out ways to get into the clinic as a way of learning about the practice of medicine and to show they are serious about becoming a physician. But there are clinical experiences that can hurt your application, and the Association of American Medical Colleges want to warn premeds that participation might signal a lack of judgement. Corbin Weaver, Kylie Miller, Teneme Konne, and Levi Endelman give some advice on the ones to avoid. Meanwhile our president-elect is thinking about creating a ‘commission on autism,’ and may be looking to a well-known anti-vaxxer to head it up. And a cybersecurity flaw leaves pacemakers and defibrillators wide open to hackers, allowing them to shock patients or drain batteries. And we find out whether our co-hosts can really understand their patients, even if they speak sdrawkcab. Listeners, share your thoughts with us each week. Call us at 347-SHORTCT any time, and see our Facebook page for a question to consider every week.
We love to talk to movers and shakers at the margins of medicine (if that’s a thing). If you’re doing something interesting, or know someone who is and want us to have them on the show, we’d like to hear from you.
Send your suggestions to theshortcoats@gmail.com. Be sure to include some details on why you or the person you’re suggesting might be of interest to our listeners, along with any links to relevant information.
Thanks for helping to make The Short Coat Podcast the best show about medical students there is!…
“Oh, sweetie, aren’t you precious! We were looking for a real doctor!” Photo by gbaku
Dave once again forces the group to play a game of questionable relevance to medicine in which his co-hosts ask each other anatomy questions while wearing speech jammer headphones. Corbin Weaver, Matt Wilson, and Issac Schwantes are good sports, however, which is easy for them seeing as how Dave is the absolute worst at talking while wearing the mind-scrambling headset. We also discuss a couple recent examples of bias in medicine, including flight attendants’ response to a young, black doctor’s offer to help a distressed passenger in flight, and Delta’s follow up admission that its policies weren’t helpful. Another example: a recent study that seemed to conclude women were better doctors than men, without addressing other, perhaps systemic reasons for the results. And what can hairdressers do about domestic violence? Illinois lawmakers think they can help quite a bit.
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.
Listener Mitch writes in to ask what this week’s co-hosts (Tony Rosenberg, Alex Volkmar, Rob Humble, and Nicole Morrow) wish they knew before they got to medical school. What should Mitch think about debt? Seeking honors? Voluntourism? And with the news that an artificial fingertip was successfully wired to an amputee’s nerves allowing him to detect rough and smooth surfaces, Dave decides it’s time to test the amazing sense of touch. This may or may not be an excuse for Dave to get his co-hosts to wear bags on their heads. Continue reading A Touching Episode→
Zika has been in the news, if you haven’t noticed, as a neglected tropical disease which has been linked to a frightening surge in birth defects in Central and South America. The response to Zika is going to depend upon the science–which is very much up in the air–along with economic and cultural factors. Chief among those are huge income disparities, population complexities, and limits on access to family planning options. On today’s episode, Ellie Ginn, Marielle Meurice, Kevo Rivera, and Jessica Waters meet up with one of the researchers who is fighting this bug. Dr. Selma Jeronimo isn’t a household name in the US, but she is becoming one in her home country of Brazil. She is the director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Rio Grande do Norte, and a professor of biochemistry and medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal. Her job is investigating Brazil’s endemic diseases. Continue reading Brazil’s Zika Crisis→
Darren S. Hoffmann, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology
They stand up every day in the front of the room, going on about the nitty-gritty details of this or that, while your desperate fear of missing something that will be on the test is coming off you like an odor. But who are these lecturers and professors, really? We find out in this series, Secret Lives of CCOM Professors.Continue reading Darren Hoffmann→
Dylan Todd, Marc Toral, Eric Wilson are on hand to give advice to caller Todd, who is just beginning his journey from community college to medical school. Is the advice we give any good? Well, we tried, and that’s all that counts. Also, we discuss researchers’ discovery that it’s possible to cause hallucinations just by staring into someone else’s eyes for 10 minutes. Try it! Don’t be weird, get permission first; maybe even start by introducing yourself. Continue reading Advice for the Young At Heart→
An honest guide to the amazing and intense world of medical school.
Oh, gosh. It’s Kaci McCleary and Amy Young’s last show as co-hosts. Irisa Mahaparn and Teneme Konne join them to discuss their impending moves to Colorado and Minnesota. Also, they lament Iowa’s new Fetal Heartbeat Bill and what some observers believe will be an associated collapse of OB/Gyn in Iowa should the law go into effect. But life goes on, and Amy–a relatively new parent–talks parenting fails. Luckily for her little Sammy, and sadly for his own children, Dave has her beat. And listener Corey reaches out on Facebook to tell Dave he’s wrong. Shocker.
