Tag Archives: AJ Chowdhury

The King of Intestinal Gas

Audio March 4, 2021 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:17 — 41.5MB)

This episode is sponsored by Panacea Financial, a Division of Sonabank, Member FDIC. Panacea is banking for medical students and doctors.

Every once in a while, Dave likes to just get to know his med student co-hosts better. This time, in order to accomplish that goal, he invited each of them–M1s Rick Gardner, AJ Chowdhury, Alex Belzer, and M4 Tim Maxwell–to bring some converation starters with them. Is it relevant? Sure, if you squint your ears real hard, jeez, can’t you guys give up on clinical relevance every so often and just have some fun?

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DROWNING IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Audio February 4, 2021 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:59 — 44.8MB)

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Doing stuff outside of your coursework is fantastic…until it isn’t.

explosion photo — Actual photograph of Gwyneth Paltrow’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle in use.

Listener Tasneem Ahmed–a fourth-year medic at London’s King’s College–joins MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk, M4 Holly Conger, and M1s AJ Chowdhury and Alex Belzer on the show. She wrote to us at theshortcoats@gmail.com because she wanted to talk with us about those times when extracurricular activities are too much of a good thing. These activities are important to both schools and students as a way to convey and learn vital lessons about service and career opportunities. But there is a temptation to overdo it in an attempt to distinguish oneself as a competitive applicant. Take that far enough, and it’s a recipe for exhaustion and burnout.

We also take time to compare the two systems of medical education, dance on the grave of Step 2 CS, and cover the most important story of January 2021: Gwyneth Paltrow’s exploding vagina candle.

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Is Medicine A Calling, or a Job?

Audio January 28, 2021 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:00 — 59.5MB)

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Which take on medicine is best for patients and provider mental health?

Dave and the gang–including M1s AJ Chowdhury and Alex Belzer; M4 Holly Conger; and MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk–take a look at the prevalent idea that medicine is a “calling,” somewhat like religion is for many. That’s an imperfect analogy, but there are parallels. People talk, for instance, about the sacrifices, the altruism, the service, and the requirement that doctors be at all times upstanding and display exceptional integrity. This view has some obvious benefits for the profession, including that its practitioners are laser focused on being the best physicians and people they can be.

But that view of physician-hood carries with it a lot of weight. When medicine is viewed as a calling, being a physician may become one’s primary identity. And when perfection remains frustratingly out of reach, the risk is that you’ll come to view yourself as a bad person and not as a doctor who is still learning. At least, that’s what Dave worries, but is it true?

Plus, Holly brings us up to date on life as an M4, especially her search for a residency position.

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What You Should Tell Your FAmily About Med School

Audio January 21, 2021 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:04 — 41.3MB)

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How they can help, support, and understand what you’re doing here.

caveman photo — “I’m afraid medical science has yet to find a cure for ‘Brown Owies,’ madam.”

[We livestream our recording sessions most Fridays on our listeners Facebook group, The Short Coat Student Lounge. Join us to add your questions and comments to the show!]

Families are a blessing (usually). A source of support, love, and acceptance, they can prop you up in those moments when you need it. Sure, sometimes they goof–well meaning comments, misplaced efforts to help, and untimely visits do happen–but they just want what’s best.

On this episode MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk and M1s AJ Chowdhury, Alex Belzer and Nicole Hines talk about the things they’d have wanted their families to know about before med school began.

Speaking of misguided attempts to be helpful, Dave leads the team in an exercise to develop their communication skills, to see if the crew get their medical points across to their patients even when forced to speak as cavemen.

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Vaccine Fever

Audio December 24, 2020 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:29 — 69.4MB)

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Happy Holidays!

As we recorded this show, vaccine doses were beginning to spread across the world–well, across the rich countries of the world, anyway. The poorer countries were left with the WHO’s risky donation-funded program to distribute doses, causing concern that the program might just collapse because some countries we could mention decided not to contribute. We’re looking at you, United States of America and China.

We discuss ‘the right to be forgotten,’ a right which many in the USA and elsewhere might not meaningfully have. And Dave pretends to be a medical educator with a pop quiz on historical medical practices.

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Quality over Quantity: Clinical Experiences and Volunteering in COVID Times

Audio November 26, 2020 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:12 — 84.1MB)

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[This episode is sponsored by Panacea Financial, a Division of Sonabank, Member FDIC. Please support our sponsor by visiting https://panaceafinancial.com/]

The Short Coats have begun livestreaming their recordings in our Facebook group (most Fridays at noon central–join us and be a part of the show). Listeners Garrett and Isaac wrote in with questions about the clinical hours schools want from their applicants. How important is the number of hours, asked Garrett, and what changes in that number are schools making in COVID times? Lucky for you, gentlemen, MD/PhD student Aline Sandouk, M3 Emma Barr, and M1s Alex Belzer and AJ Chowdhury are on the show to suss it out for you. Plus, we provide some suggestions for alternatives if the usual activities just aren’t available to you. And livestream viewer Cierra asks how we think this year’s experiences will change medical education. Did we learn new things about how to deliver medical education? Are students less prepared than they would otherwise have been?

A couple shows ago, Dave indulged himself in a rant about Americans’ seeming inability to follow best practices for spreading COVID, basically saying those folks are wimps. But a recent editorial in MedPageToday.com makes him reconsider his delivery.

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Md/PhD worries: Transitioning to the Lab

Audio October 22, 2020 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:34 — 77.7MB)

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Next semester Madi Wahlen will enter the PhD phase of her MD/PhD journey, and the though to that transition makes her kind of nervous. Fortunately, both she and Aline Sandouk were on this week’s episode, allowing space for Madi (and co-hosts Levi Endelman and AJ Chowdhury) to ask Aline questions about her experiences transitioning to the PhD phase. How did she handle the transition? How did she find a lab to work in? What kinds of specialties to MD/PhD students typically go into? Aline knows!

Reminder to US Listeners: Vote! Time is running out to get your absentee or mail-in vote counted. Head on over to http://ballotpedia.org to research candidates, find out how voting works in your state at http://vote.org, and know that Dave and The Short Coats love you for your engagement in the process of choosing our leaders.

And Dave gives the gang a fill-in-the-blanks quiz on weird research he found. What do mosquitos and people both hate enough to stop having sex? What do coked-up bees and people tend to do more of? And what preference do chickens and people have in common? Dave has the answers.

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Chronic Conditions in Medical School

Audio October 8, 2020 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:16 — 80.1MB)

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What having a chronic health issue means to medical students varies…except that it will make them even better doctors.

Listener Michael has type one diabetes and “an incredibly rare form” of epilepsy. He’s pretty open about this and plans to use his experience to inform his education on patient care. He got in touch to ask us to discuss chronic health conditions and how they interact with medical school and the patient experience. We were lucky enough to find a few medical students to offer their own journeys for discussion to cohosts Emma Barr, Aline Sandouk, and newbies AJ Chowdhury and Alex Belzer.

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Doing stuff outside of your coursework is fantastic…until it isn’t.

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Which take on medicine is best for patients and provider mental health?

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How they can help, support, and understand what you’re doing here.

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Happy Holidays!

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What having a chronic health issue means to medical students varies…except that it will make them even better doctors.

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