Tag Archives: families

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)

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.”

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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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Short Coat Podcast

Family Strife, Chuck’s Pro-Life, & the Ebola Bureaucracy Knife

Audio May 17, 2018 Dave Etler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:17 — 97.9MB)

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Our Short Coat Podcast keyfob giveaway is still happening! Post the show somewhere on the internet where pre-med and med students hang out, and email a screenshot to theshortcoats@gmail.com, and we’ll send you one with our thanks!

Our own Claire Castaneda won first place in the Carver College of Medicine’s Carol A. Bowman Creative Writing Contest for Medical Students, and her piece caught Dave’s eyes and heart. She talks with Aline Sandouk, Melissa Chan, and Tony Rosenberg about the dynamics of family strife and the pressure they can exert to follow one career path over another. Meanwhile, Aline expresses her feelings on being left behind by her original classmates as she continues her MD/PhD studies.

And considering that most doctors still don’t (and mostly, can’t) know much about how medical marijuana should be prescribed, Dave subjects his co-hosts to a pop quiz.

This Week in Medical News

NYU Langone Medical School lost two of their community to suicide in one week, in the ongoing tragedy of physician and student suicide. What Maryland doctors could face as the bar for juries to decide medical malpractice is lowered. Is Iowa’s US Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, trying to pressure Supreme Court judges to retire in order to one day secure a Roe v. Wade busting win for pro-life conservatives? Ebola is back, just in time for the Trump administration to dissolve the office responsible for preparing for pandemics.

We Want to Hear From You

Med school interview season is coming! Can we help you with your med school admissions question? Call us at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com. Do all three!

Continue reading Family Strife, Chuck’s Pro-Life, & the Ebola Bureaucracy Knife →

Short Coat Podcast

Andrew Solomon, and Parents Raising Unexpectedly Different Children

April 17, 2014 Dave Etler

The Carver College of Medicine’s conference on the intersection’s between the humanities and medicine was fortunate to book author and psychologist Andrew Solomon as its featured presenter this year. Solomon is an activist and philanthropist in LGBT rights, mental health, education and the arts.

Andrew Solomon, PhD

His latest book, Far From the Tree, is an exploration of families coping with the differences between the parents and their extraordinary children: deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender.

These stories are courageous in their telling, as are the families who opened themselves up to Dr. Solomon over the eleven-year course of writing the book. Ultimately, they led Dr. Solomon to understand his own identity, and helped him with his decision to have his own children.

Students Rachel Press-Goosen, Eric Wilson, and Dwiju Kumar sat down with Dr. Solomon to discuss the book and find out more about the struggles and triumphs these families experienced.

Listen to Episode 031: Andrew Solomon, and Parents Raising Unexpectedly Different Children.

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The opinions expressed in this feed and podcast are not those of the University of Iowa or the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.