Short Coat Podcast

Power Poses, Mesh Body Suits, and the Return of Dr. Love

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Feel the power! (photo by Corey Christensen)
Feel the power! (photo by Corey Christensen)

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy’s well known TED talk discusses the utility of ‘power poses,’ and medical students are always looking for ways to feel more powerful.  So Dave challenges Ellie Ginn, Tony Rosenberg, Marc Toral, and Mark Moubarek to give them a try.  Zika remains a force for making people crazy, and Brazil has banned the use of a larvicide incorrectly linked with  Monsanto as a result of a report from a group of Argentinian physicians who advocate for the ban of insecticides.  Tony suggests a better option: mosquito-mesh body suits.  In fact, he’s full of ideas, including replacing the traditional family-medicine feces chart, used to help patients discuss their poop with their doctors, with plastinated specimens; and he’s considering launching a company that offers fecal transplants from specimens provided by celebrities and sports figures.

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Short Coat Podcast

Here’s Lemons In Your Eyes

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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?

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Short Coat Podcast

Brazil’s Zika Crisis

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Dr. Selma Jeronimo
Dr. Selma Jeronimo

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 →

Short Coat Podcast

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

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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 →

Short Coat Podcast

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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Short Coat Podcast

Moonshots and Worldviews

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Don’t worry, everyone, he’s got this. Photo by DonkeyHotey

Dave and Emily White, fresh from the University of Iowa Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology’s yearly 4Cast conference,  talk about their presentation on the podcast, which was fun.  And they, along with Rob Humble and Doug Russo, talk about the President’s recent State of the Union address, including the so-called “moonshot” to cure cancer.  Can that even work?  Rob takes issue with the whole moonshot comparison.

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Short Coat Podcast

Normalizing Human Behavior, Transvaginal Speakers, and Deflating Outsized Egos

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Photo by Bexx Brown-Spinelli

John Pienta, Cole Cheney, Amy Young, and newbie Rob Humble join Dave to discuss the recent winter break, the Rose Bowl, and Stanford’s half-time band performance.  We discuss doctors who are non-compliant with their own recommendations for patients.  Is that something they should be condemned for, or is it human nature?  And when patients are non-compliant or engage in risky behavior, should docs acknowledge that as normal human behavior and avoid shaming them for it? Continue reading Normalizing Human Behavior, Transvaginal Speakers, and Deflating Outsized Egos →

Short Coat Podcast

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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Short Coat Podcast

Karma Bro, A Trumped-Up Doctor’s Note, and Sleepless in The Saddle

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Just doing his job? Photo by stevendepolo

After Martin Shkreli’s arrest, John Pienta, Marc Toral, Greg Woods, and Amy Young, discuss why Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli is so hated, given that capitalist enterprises have profit as their overarching goal–hasn’t he just done his job?  Meanwhile, two ongoing clinical trials have been experimenting on human subjects without consent. Those subjects: residents and their patients.  The experiment: what happens if hospitals return to the longer hours that prevailed for residents before they were restricted in 2011? We explore the limitations of consent, residents’ satisfaction with their working conditions, how many residents may not feel that restricting their hours is best for their patients, and what working and being a patient at an academic medical center means.

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Short Coat Podcast

Their Patients Won’t Know What Hit Them.

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Oh, wait…never mind. Photo by Celestine Chua

Second-years Kaci McCleary, Marc Toral, Corbin Weaver, and Aline Sandouk are about to finish their didactic studies in the curriculum and embark on their clinical clerkships!  At long last, they get to work with patients.  Among the questions they face: is it better to put yourself out there during clerkships?  Or keep your head down? And are they nervous? Maybe a little, but there was plenty of health news this week to distract themselves with, including a Harvard study that provides evidence that one’s stress and one’s health may be unrelated.

Continue reading Their Patients Won’t Know What Hit Them. →

An honest guide to the amazing and intense world of medical school.