Tag Archives: Ananya Munjal

MUSICIANS TAKE A STAND ON SPOTIFY/ROGAN. WILL that FIGHT HEALTH MISINFO?

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Standing up against health misinformation is great, but will it help people understand?

TL;DR

  • Folk rock god Neil Young and others have removed their music from Spotify, which hosts Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast over his COVID and vaccine discussions with deniers.
  • Does that actually accomplish anything, or is it too late to win over the hesitant?
  • We play Kiss, Marry, Kill: Medical Specialties Edition.
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Some very famous musicians have told their labels to pull their catalogs from Spotify over it’s hosting of Joe Rogan’s podcast, which often includes discussions with vaccine and COVID deniers. This has renewed the discussion over Internet media’s role in shaping public discourse on important life-and-death topics. But M2 Eric Boeshart, M1 Mallory Kallish, M3 Ananya Munjal, and MD/PhD student Riley Behan-Bush aren’t convinced that it’ll persuade many to adopt a more expert-influenced approach to their health. (Note: we discussed this prior to Rogan’s response, in which he promised to include more experts on his show).

The crew also plays a game of Kiss, Marry, Kill: Medical Specialties edition.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Continue reading MUSICIANS TAKE A STAND ON SPOTIFY/ROGAN. WILL that FIGHT HEALTH MISINFO?

Why Med Learners are Asked to “Reflect,” And What Does It Even Mean?

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How students should think about reflection when the word isn’t always well-defined.

TL;DR

  • Whether it’s a class assignment, a personal statement, or a scholarship essay, students are often commanded to reflect on their experiences.
  • Reflection is can be a useful part of understanding what you are becoming. But what that means and how to do it are frequently not well defined.
  • Our M4 co-hosts discuss whether their fears about the residency application process were well-founded or just wheel spinning.
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Listener Empirica Soberface (not her real name) called in to ask us about reflection–something medical learners are often asked to do during their education–saying that it doesn’t come naturally to her. So Dave invited Cate Dicharry, the director of the Writing and Humanities Program here at the Carver College of Medicine, to come on and give us her thoughts on this common assignment. M4s Emma Barr and Madeline Cusimano, M3 Ananya Munjal, and MD/PhD student Riley Behan-Bush are on hand to supply some of their ideas on how best to process what it is they’ve been becoming.

Emma and Madeline also discuss the fears they had about interviewing for their future residency jobs, the anxiety that many senior medical students are feeling right now, and whether their fears were realized or proven to be wheel-spinning.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Continue reading Why Med Learners are Asked to “Reflect,” And What Does It Even Mean?

AMA: Racism is a Public health Threat. SCP Co-hosts: Gosh, really?

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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/]

In mid-November, the American Medical Association declared racism to be a public health threat. With that declaration, they adopted policies to acknowledge and recognize racism as detrimental to the health and well-being of all of America’s citizens, and to encourage the study of its effects and the creation of medical education curricula.

Great! But this week’s co-hosts, Nathen Spitz, Aline Sandouk, Sahaana Arumugam, and Ananya Munjal, have mixed feelings and hope that the AMA won’t be among the many institutions that have made similar declarations without taking real action.

But first, listener Malcolm wrote in to theshortcoats@gmail.com to ask how he might take advantage of his fortunate position as the holder of multiple acceptances to medical school in negotiating for financial aid. The co-hosts have definitely got some advice, based mostly upon our fantasies of being in the same position.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

What About Choosing the Cheapest Medical School?

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Given how much med school costs, isn’t it best to go for your cheapest option?

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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/]

A listener we’re calling Victor Von Stateschool called us at 347-SHORT-CT to continue the recent spate of listener questions about choosing a medical school. Sure, prestige is something to consider…and yes, perhaps moving away from home to broaden your horizons is a good idea…but what about just picking your cheapest option even when you have the stats to go elsewhere? MD/PhD students Sahaana Arumugam and Miranda Schene, and M2s Ananya Munjal and Nathen Spitz try to put it all together. Pro tip: you can actually pit schools’ offers against each other to lower your tuition!

We also talk about the CCOM Art Show that Ananya and Sahaana are helping to put together, and which any med student from anywhere can submit work to.

And we try the Whisper Challenge again, because we’re not in the studio together to get germs on each other. Thanks, COVID…

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

The Doctor is Burned Out ft. Jeff Moody, MD

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We are honored to talk with author and physician Jeff Moody, University of Iowa College of Medicine class of ’92, and urologist, here to talk with us about physician burnout, It’s the topic of his new book The Doctor is Burned Out:  A Physician’s Guide to Recovery.

Co-hosts Madi Wahlen, Aline Sandouk, Ananya Munjal, and Nicole Hines talk about ‘wellness,’ the ways that med students and physicians look at medicine and medical education that contribute to burnout, like the dangers of maximizing everything you do and a reliance on external metrics for success, why some specialties are more likely to have burnt out docs than others. Dr. Moody also encourages us to understand our own value to the system–in dollars–as a way to ask for solutions for burnout. He encourages us to remember that our lives effect burnout, too–docs and students aren’t exempt from adverse childhood experiences, divorce and other stressors of life! And of course, we talk about his prescription for how to fix burnout if it happens to you.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

A COVID Puzzle in a Rural Iowa Community

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Why was the Hispanic population in Clarion, Iowa seeing so many more infections?

Wright County Courthouse, Clarion, Iowa. Photo by Brandonrush (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

Dr. Michael McLoughlin, internist at Clarion Clinic, was puzzled. Why were 95% of the patients who showed up with novel coronavirus infections Hispanic? And what interventions would best help his community?

Meanwhile, M2 Abby Walling was looking for a summer project centering on health disparities after her overseas global health experience was cancelled.

Global Health Programs Director Robin Paetzold knew them both (Dr. McLoughlin graduated from CCOM in 2013), and helped get them together to find answers and develop solutions. M4 Sophie Williams-Perez, M2 Ananya Munjal, and M4 Marisa Evers sat down to talk to Abby and Dr. McLoughlin to discuss what they found.

As a bonus, Dr. McLoughlin discusses his life as a rural medicine practitioner in his town of 3,000.

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Putting on your #MedBikini

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A study is only as good as its methods, and the #medbikini study wasn’t pretty bad.

Maybe you heard:  some researchers tried to help vascular surgeons understand that their social media profiles might contain “unprofessional” content.  Things like wearing swimsuits and swearing and drinking  *shudder* alcohol. Especially by wymmin! Okay, maybe it was better intentioned than that, but join Aline Sandouk, Eric Boeshart, and Ananya Munjal as they explore the ideas and the execution behind this now-retracted ‘study.’

Listener Logan wrote in to theshortcoats@gmail.com to ask why he’s getting the impression from the questions on his secondary applications that there is a divide between specialties and service.  

And Ananya talks about her recently launched arts journal for medical learners, The Appendix. It’s not just for CCOM students, either! Any health science student can join the fun!

We Want to Hear From You

How’d we do on this week’s show? Did we miss anything in our conversation? Did we anger you? Did we make you smile? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime  or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

Podcasting from A (social) distance

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Photo by Laura-Del

(For the first time ever, we did the show with all five hosts in different places,  and it shows.  Forgive the scratchy audio in some places. We’re working on it, and hope you can look past it this time.)

In this time of social distancing, The Short Coats reluctantly step back from their education and research.   New co-hosts M1s Ananya Munjal and Claire Carmichael, along with MD/PhD students Aline Sandouk and Miranda Schene, discuss the national residency Match statistics, what their lives look like as they distance themselves from other humans.


Buy Our Merch and Give At The Same Time

You care about others, or you wouldn’t be into this medicine thing. Our #merchforgood program lets you to give to our charity of the semester and get something for yourself at the same time!

This Week in Medical News

A 3D printing company comes to Italy’s rescue, making ventilator parts, then gets sued for patent infringement for their trouble.  Flattening the curve may look more like flattening many curves.  And some believers in Indian traditional medicine suggest drinking cow urine will fight COVID-19.

We Want to Hear From You

Have you joined any efforts to help your community amid social distancing? Tell us about it at 347-SHORTCT or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

Continue reading Podcasting from A (social) distance