Tag Archives: student life

Short Coat Podcast

Recess Rehash: Med Schools Hate When Students Have Jobs. Some People Take the Risk Anyway.

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Perhaps no school would recommend working during med school, but plenty of people do it.  

[We’re on a break! But we’ll be back with a new episode on August 11, 2022. Enjoy this re-run!]

TL;DR

  • Sometimes, you just don’t want to take that extra loan money.  One option: a part time job.
  • But that is risky–the time you devote to that job could have been spent on studying, and perhaps could decrease your chances at those competitive residency programs.
  • But there are medical students who make the choice to work, and some jobs might even help your chances.
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Eliza wrote to us at theshortcoats@gmail.com because, as an older, married medical student with a young child in an expensive city, she wondered what our thoughts were on students who work during medical school.  We invited her on the show so M3 Nathen Spitz, M4s Abby Fyfe and Nick Lind, and M1 Grant Stalker could find out more about her choice to work as a therapeutic yoga teacher, and discuss some of the equity issues surrounding work during medical school.  And Nathen offers some ideas about paying jobs that can actually be a benefit to medical students in their academic lives.

We also discuss the Biden administration’s new mental health-focused initiatives, especially those focused on healthcare workers, as outlined in the president’s state of the union address. 

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 Recess Rehash: Med Schools Hate When Students Have Jobs. Some People Take the Risk Anyway. →
Short Coat Podcast

Med Schools Hate When Students Have Jobs. Some People Take the Risk Anyway.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:38 — 50.9MB)

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Perhaps no school would recommend working during med school, but plenty of people do it.  

TL;DR

  • Sometimes, you just don’t want to take that extra loan money.  One option: a part time job.
  • But that is risky–the time you devote to that job could have been spent on studying, and perhaps could decrease your chances at those competitive residency programs.
  • But there are medical students who make the choice to work, and some jobs might even help your chances.
reject photo

Eliza wrote to us at theshortcoats@gmail.com because, as an older, married medical student with a young child in an expensive city, she wondered what our thoughts were on students who work during medical school.  We invited her on the show so M3 Nathen Spitz, M4s Abby Fyfe and Nick Lind, and M1 Grant Stalker could find out more about her choice to work as a therapeutic yoga teacher, and discuss some of the equity issues surrounding work during medical school.  And Nathen offers some ideas about paying jobs that can actually be a benefit to medical students in their academic lives.

We also discuss the Biden administration’s new mental health-focused initiatives, especially those focused on healthcare workers, as outlined in the president’s state of the union address. 

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 Med Schools Hate When Students Have Jobs. Some People Take the Risk Anyway. →
Short Coat Podcast

HAVING BABIES IN MED SCHOOL, PT. 2: HOW DO SCHOOLS SUPPORT PARENTS?

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Is it enough to deal with issues on a case-by-case basis, or do schools need to do better?

TL;DR

  • We share more stories from our med student parents.
  • What the research says about how medical schools are supporting parents and pregnant students in medical school.
  • How should med schools support student parents and pregnant students–can schools do better?

Physician training comes smack in the middle of prime parenting years. Yet the intensity and time commitment required to study medicine doesn’t make the decision to have kids while in school or residency–or to go into medicine when you already have kids-seem viable.

Of course, parents do it all the time, so CCOM Dad and M3 Nick Lind is back to host another in his series on medical school parenting with some other mommies and daddies. M1 Katie Higham-Kessler, M2s Jessica De Haan andSally Heaberlin, and M3 Zach Tully discuss what schools are doing to support their students who are considering or having children, and what they can do better.

Jessica also clues us in on the body of research into this important issue. There seems to be a lack of robust research on parenting in medical school, with most such studies focusing on residency–a very different situation. Perhaps the concept of the “traditional” medical student (who is age 22 to 26) has obscured the needs of the non-traditional student who is older and wants to start or has a family.

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 HAVING BABIES IN MED SCHOOL, PT. 2: HOW DO SCHOOLS SUPPORT PARENTS? →
Short Coat Podcast

The New Medical Student: Tips and Tricks from First-Years

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A new group of co-hosts, all M1s, discuss what it’s been like to start medical school (in a pandemic).

TL;DR

  • We discuss what our new co-hosts, all M1s, learned about themselves and med school this year.
  • Did they prepare or study before they started school in the fall?
  • And very important: what flatulence schedule would they prefer?

Steph Rodriguez, Zain Mehdi, Martin Goree, and Carl Skoog are approaching the end of that stressful first year of medical school.  Dave seized the opportunity to talk about the things many incoming students might want to know about starting medical school in the coming year.  We talk about whether to prepare before school starts, what sacrifices they feel they made to study medicine, what they’ve struggle with and what was easier than expected, and whether in the midst of a lot more online learning than they were used to, did they find their people among their classmates.   

Dave likes getting to know people, so he also posed some Would You Rather questions in the hopes of revealing things about his new co-hosts.

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 The New Medical Student: Tips and Tricks from First-Years →
Short Coat Podcast

Rising From the Ashes

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Failure is a difficult topic for medical students.  It’s not something they’re used to, after earning undergrad degrees near the tops of their classes, and generally being the smartest people they know.  But science is all about failure.  Scientific experiments, part of the foundation upon which evidence-based medicine rests, fail again and again before they make the discoveries that change our understanding of the world in which we live.

Doctors must make their peace with failure.  Even the best cannot always help those counting on them.  This time on the Short Coat, we got a group of students together to discuss their experiences with failure and what they learned from it. 

Given the sensitive nature of the discussion, everyone was given the opportunity to remain anonymous, and they were cautioned to speak only of their own experiences.  Officials of the Carver College of Medicine reviewed the recording before it was released to ensure that no student’s right to confidentiality was violated.

Listen:  Episode 013: Rising From The Ashes

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.