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Short Coat Podcast

Five Med Students on Thriving in Clerkships

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Five M3s explain what actually happens when preclinical learning meets real patients.

Dave sits down with a crew of M3s and one asterisked MSTP M4 — Riley Behan-Bush, Samantha Gardner, Srishti Mathur, Sahana Sarin, and Sarah Upton — to talk about the actual experience of clerkships: what the jump from three semesters of preclinical book-learning into surgery, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and family medicine really feels like, why the first two weeks can swing from “best of med school” to “worst of med school” depending entirely on the rotation you land, and how you’re supposed to figure out your place on a team that changes every two weeks. They dig into the actual mechanics of honoring a clerkship — shelf exam cutoffs that can sit at 90%+, evaluations that make up 70-80% of a grade, and the particular indignity of missing honors by a single point after doing everything right.

The group works through how to handle conflicting instructions from residents and attendings, how to ask questions without challenging the hierarchy (“for my own understanding, can you explain why you decided…”), and how to actually figure out a specialty when you love everything, including surgery where you’ll stand for hours. Sahana’s pros-and-cons journal after every rotation gets a real endorsement. Also, they answer a batch of questions submitted by their own preclinical classmates: how much free time you actually get (some), whether Des Moines versus Iowa City rotations matter (it depends what you want out of medicine), and what actually makes clerkship life easier — which turns out to be a year’s supply of Costco garbage bags, a cellular hotspot, and, for at least one host, a husband who meal preps.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Isa Perez-Sandi
  • Co-hosts: Srishti Mathur, Sarah Upton, Samantha Gardner, Riley Behan Bush, Sahana Sarin
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

[URL template for episode https://media.blubrry.com/theshortcoat/podcast.uiowa.edu/com/osa/CHANGETHIS.mp3]

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Five Med Students on Thriving in Clerkships →
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Med Students React: Social Media from Helpful to Hogwash (Recess Rehash)

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Slather some beef tallow on it.

On this episode, M3 Fallon Jung, M1s Isa Perez-Sandi and Cory Karasek, and M2 Maria Schapfel let loose on the internet’s wildest health content. We react to AI-generated videos claiming cortisol is why Dave smells bad, Colonel Sanders warning you about non-biodegradable supermarket fruit, and those unhinged animations where a screaming spine demands you fix your posture. Some of it’s nonsense, some of it’s accurate, and all of it leads to tangents about fake vomit made from chunky soup, whether the ER triage nurse should tell non-emergent patients “good news, you’re not dying,” and the eternal question every clinical student faces: “So what specialty are you going into?”

We talk about imposter syndrome, being “pluripotent,” the secret ER life hack nobody tells you about, and why Jeff Goldblum’s face should be used in all AI-generated health content. It’s an hour of medical students trying to make sense of what social media is feeding their future patients—and themselves.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Fallon Jung, Alexis Baker, Cory Karasek, Maria Schapfel
  • Clips: alimentaryschool (Instagram), lifehacks (Facebook), nursestankk (Facebook), superzenlabs (, fullhealthmode (Instagram), meow._.22_1 (Instagram), doctor.binh (Instagram)

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Med Students React: Social Media from Helpful to Hogwash (Recess Rehash) →
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Imposter Syndrome, Uncomfortable Fails, and Med School’s Real Ups and Downs

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New medical students hear the slings and arrows straight from second- and third-years

The Short Coat records in front of a live audience — a room full of brand-new medical students at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine during orientation week. Dave is joined by M3 Zach Grissom, M3 Sarah Upton, M2 Sophie Hueser, and first-time co-host M2 Sudeep Gadde, and together they map the ups and downs of med school across three fronts: the identity shift of becoming a doctor, the grind of the education system itself, and the way a personal life bends (but doesn’t break!) around all of it.

Isolation comes up first— Zach on rotations where he’s the only med student in the room with no classmates to lean on, Sophie on watching pre-med friends peel off into “big kid jobs” while she’s still logging into ICON, the hierarchy of attendings, senior residents, fellows, interns, and sub-Is that can make a clinical team feel like a stack of people keeping tabs on you. Also, failure gets its own segment: Zach walks through hitting 30% on his first neuro exam, and later on another rotation, intubating a patient’s esophagus instead of their trachea — followed minutes later by two clean IV sticks. Sophie’s biggest fail of the year? Forgetting her dad’s birthday, the day of an anatomy exam.

Speaking of anatomy, the crew gets into what it’s actually like in the lab — the respect built into how donors are covered and discussed, the new vocabulary that makes the whole subject click by the end of the semester, and why nobody in the room passed out (a low bar, gratefully cleared). Also covered: doom-scrolling defense strategies (several apps gets endorsements), the comparison trap of watching classmates race through UWorld while they’re treading water, and what it actually takes to be married, parent two kids, and still pass boards — Zach’s honest answer: some days you’re a mediocre student, a mediocre husband, and a mediocre dad, and that’s a win.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Sophia Hueser, Sudeep Gadde
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

Timestamps

00:00 — Live audience special: Short Coat’s first-ever taping for orientation week
03:04 — Isolation vs. belonging on clinical rotations and in the MSTP track
09:49 — Medical hierarchy explained: attendings, residents, fellows, and sub-Is
16:33 — Imposter syndrome and the trap of comparing yourself to classmates
23:26 — Study motivation apps and beating doom-scrolling during exam week
31:16 — What anatomy lab is really like, from donor respect to dissection nerves
35:38 — Failure in med school: failed exams, a wrong-pipe intubation, and a forgotten birthday
48:07 — Balancing marriage, parenting, and medical school

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Imposter Syndrome, Uncomfortable Fails, and Med School’s Real Ups and Downs →
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DNP Doubts, Prepping for Patients, and Smarts Self-Doubt–listener questions answered! (Recess Rehash)

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[Dave’s out of the office this week, so please enjoy this previously released episode!]

Real answers for your real med school dilemmas.

We’ve had some listener question stacking up like it’s the ER waiting room at shift change—and now we’re finally calling some names. This week, we’re clearing the board and giving straight talk on everything from whether Rainey might regret her choice of DNP over med school, Worried Traveler’s fears of surviving their first clinical rotations, and Zion’s untested study habits. You’ll hear why reputation beats job title, the art of asking questions without tanking the vibe, and some ideas on making the transition from an easier undergrad education to med school madness. M4s Hend Al-Kaylani, Maryam Ahmad, and Madeline Ungs confront the awkward task of making friends in med school and why it’s okay if you’re not instantly every resident/faculty favorite.

Bonus web feature! If you fear you never learned to study, visit our this episode’s webpage for a video series by Dave and friends–Zion, this one’s for you!

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Hind Al-Kaylani, Maryam Ahmed, Madeline Ungs\

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading DNP Doubts, Prepping for Patients, and Smarts Self-Doubt–listener questions answered! (Recess Rehash) →
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How A Neurologist Thinks about The Self, ft. Masud Husain

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Oxford neurologist reveals how small brain changes can rewrite who we are

Dave’s got a brain — he’s pretty sure, anyway, since the MRI never mentioned otherwise — and this week he, with M3 Gizzy Lundquist and M2s Akshaj Joshi and Isa Perez-Sandi sit down with University of Oxford neurologist Masud Husain to talk about what happens when that brain stops working the way it’s supposed to. Husain’s new book, Our Brains, Ourselves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain, walks through seven patients whose identities came apart when a single cognitive process — memory, language, attention, motivation — went sideways, and the crew digs into David, a young finance guy with two tiny basal ganglia strokes who became so profoundly apathetic he couldn’t be bothered to shower, get his Social Security benefits, or put on the music he loved, until a Parkinson’s drug brought him back: new suit, new haircut, new job, new girlfriend, all from restoring one chemical pathway.

Husain almost named the book Outsiders, until his editor worried the parallel between “outsider through brain damage” and “outsider through migration” was too politically loaded to sell, but it’s a parallel that traces straight back to Husain’s own childhood, recording himself on his dad’s reel-to-reel to practice sounding more BBC and less like a kid who’d just moved from the Indian subcontinent. Isa and Akshaj push him on the biology of motivation itself: an Oxford scanner study found apathetic students show more basal ganglia and frontal lobe activity than motivated ones when weighing a reward, not less, because deciding whether something’s worth the effort turns out to be the expensive part. Husain is blunt about the dopamine-detox mythology built around doom scrolling. The evidence, he says, is thin; and he’s just as forthright about where psychiatry and neurology actually diverge: not by nature, but by which one currently has biomarkers, as illustrated by NMDA receptor encephalitis, a condition that looks exactly like schizophrenia until someone finds the tumor causing it.

Also, hemispatial neglect, Lewy body hallucinations, the Bayesian prediction machine your brain runs every time you mistake a shadow for your spouse, and Akshaj corners Husain on the hard problem of consciousness with a theory involving meditators and alpha-wave synchronization. None of them solve it. Good hour of trying, though.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Isa Perez-Sandi, Akshaj Joshi, Gizzy Lundquist
  • Guest: Masud Husain
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading How A Neurologist Thinks about The Self, ft. Masud Husain →
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From Bartending to Bedside: What Our Pre-Med Jobs Taught Us About Medicine (Recess Rehash)

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[Dave’s out of the office this week, so please enjoy this previously released episode!]

No med student starts with a blank slate

If you’re thinking of starting over and going to med school, you might wonder what your previous jobs have done to prepare you for it. Good news: your old jobs and activities might matter more than your GPA ever will.

In this episode, M2s Samantha Gardner, Sarah Upton, Nick Lembezeder, and Srishti Mathur unpack the skills they didn’t know they’d use in medicine—the ones they gained by being not-a-doctor. From surviving music juries to calming drunk uncs, from educating bros about consent to making the hard calls without enough information, they’ve found the road to medicine is rarely straight—and that’s probably a good thing.

Also, why confidence is overrated and how to react when given feedback (hint: STFU). Oh, and we hear from a listener who wants to know if we were super studious in high school. We try to let him down gently.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Srishti Mathur, Nick Lembezeder, Samantha Gardner, Sarah Upton

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the official positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading From Bartending to Bedside: What Our Pre-Med Jobs Taught Us About Medicine (Recess Rehash) →
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Clown Shoes, Attending Feedback, and a Very Quiet Goose

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Med School Students and Staff Rank Weird Situations

This week M3s Srishti Mathur and Zach Grissom are joined by CCOM admissions expert Rachel Shulista and the PA Program clinicals coordinator Andrew Dao. You might think they’re here to offer their expertise in some informative way so that Short Coat Listeners can benefit. You’d be wrong, because Dave is making everyone rank things nobody should have to rank: how believable your excuse for missing sleep is, how harsh your last piece of attending feedback was, how likely you are to botch a procedure you’ve never done before. It’s another round of our special version of That Escalated Quickly, the card game where the only rule committing to the rank.

Can a very quiet goose gets past MCAT exam security? It’s a question worth knowing the answer to. After all, test day involves tattoo checks and confiscated glasses. We explore how to tell grandma you’re dropping out of med school to make clown shoes. Srishti verifies that Rachel’s forehead isn’t covered in fishing bait before giving it a lil kiss. Rachel, who reads every single admissions application that crosses her desk (but does not make decisions on them, she swears, don’t @her) does not appreciate Dave’s BS and tells him he’s the problem.

Also, we settle the eternal question on how to answer “why do you want to be a doctor” at a party, and Dave does an Obama impression that everybody agrees needs work.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Srishti Mathur, Zach Grissom, Rachel Shulista, Andrew Dao
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Clown Shoes, Attending Feedback, and a Very Quiet Goose →
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Feedback, Filler Words, and Fights Over Naturopathic Medicine

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Four future doctors weigh in on evaluations, filler words, and a breakup over medical science.

M2s Akshaj Joshi, Anna Royer, Charis Edwards, and Cory Karasek talk about giving and receiving feedback, what it’s like reading a stack of evaluative comments about yourself, why “keep reading” is somehow a real evaluation, and whether attendings have started letting AI write their write-ups. Also, do quiet students get read more harshly than talkative ones, does anybody actually change their filler-word habit once someone points it out, and is your personality basically locked in since the day you were born (this one gets a full psychoanalysis of Joshi’s baby years). Also, we visit reddit to help people. For instance, an AITA dilemma asks whether refusing hospital visitors after birth makes you the asshole, whether it’s awful to end a ten-year relationship over a partner’s decision to go to naturopathic school, and somebody’s uncle wants a free diagnosis at the next family gathering, and gets read for it, ethically, legally, and personally.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Anna Royer
  • Co-hosts: Anna Royer, Cory Karasek, Charis Edwards, Akshaj Joshi
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Feedback, Filler Words, and Fights Over Naturopathic Medicine →
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Should Medical Students have Babies (spoiler: yeah, baby!)

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If a baby’s what you want, then go for it! Here are the challenges.

M2 Jack Klitgaard and M4 Fallon Jung are both expecting newborns in the coming months. M2 Regan Demaris has a couple toddlers already, and CCOM Registrar and Curriculum Director Carrie Bernat had her children while putting her husband through medical school two decades ago. In short, it’s the perfect group to talk about the challenges and triumphs of cuddling kids while cramming the Krebs cycle.

Fallon’s challenge will be how to apply for residency positions with a new little one. Jack faces starting his clinical rotations while stepping into the role of father. Fortunately, both of their spouses are going to stay at home to be the primary caregiver. Regan’s toddlers came into the world before medical school and as her husband was in the Navy, which presented its own moments of terror–like how to cope with a daycare disaster while he was incommunicado on a boat somewhere. And Carrie–well, 20 years ago she was working at another medical school and having babies while her husband navigated an MD/PhD program. They were handling it well until her second child was born with a chromosomal microdeletion, upending carefully laid plans.

The common thread: parenting is an adventure, but generally speaking, med schools accommodate! From rearranging exam days all the way up to taking some time off, there are lots of possibilities. That perhaps wasn’t true in decades past–some faculty still remember the days when having children during medical education was close-to-forbidden, or at least, ill-advised.

Today, it’s a necessity for schools to support young families as best they can. CCOM has supplied respirators for anatomy lab fumes, or rearranged clinical rotations to make things less messy. Sometimes it’s complicated–a leave of absence might be necessary though no-one’s first choice–but we’ll find a way. Just like parents pivoting their way through child-rearing challenges, schools make their own adjustments on the fly.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Dave Etler
  • Co-hosts: Carrie Bernat, Fallon Jung, Jack Klitgaard, Regan Demaris
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.

We need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!)

The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Should Medical Students have Babies (spoiler: yeah, baby!) →
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Free Med School and a Mission: Is Military Medicine For You?

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The tradeoffs are real, but so are the leadership, travel, and character-building most doctors never get.

For pre-meds staring down six figures of debt, the military offers something rare: a fully funded path through medical school built around a mission bigger than the paycheck. Dave sits down with M3 Nick Lebezeder, M3 Lauren VandeKamp, and M2 Lydia Bemnister to walk through the menu of options — among others, the Health Professions Scholarship Program, National Guard and Reserve stipends, USUHS (the military’s own medical school in Bethesda, which pays you a second lieutenant’s salary while you train), and the Navy’s Health Services Collegiate Program. Nick lays out how a three-year HPSP scholarship maps to three years of service after residency, and Lauren walks through the math on longer residencies so nobody signs blind. The commitment is real. So is what it buys: leadership experience from day one, a guaranteed specialty pipeline for the ones who plan ahead, and, for the right person, a sense of purpose civilian medicine doesn’t always hand you.

Lydia contributes her experience: seven-plus years active duty as an Army nurse, straight from her commissioning oath into basic training the same day, no ROTC required. She did postpartum nursing in Germany, pediatrics, seven months at Camp Bastion Leatherneck in Afghanistan, and a year running a troop medical clinic in Korea she calls, flatly, her favorite job of her career — patching up soldiers who hurt themselves on the baseball field and pulling 2 a.m. antibiotics for ear infections. She’s honest that you give up a say in where you’re posted. She’s just as honest that she has zero regrets and is deeply grateful for what the military gave her.

The specialty picture is more competitive in spots — three orthopedic surgery slots Air Force-wide some years, the military’s first right of refusal on where you match — but Nick and Lauren both point out that the branches actively want their people in the specialties they’re drawn to, and the PA route is described as the best-kept secret in the whole system for staying hands-on. Nick’s own path started with a VA phlebotomy job during his master’s, watching veterans he respected point him toward HPSP himself. The advice they’d pass on to anyone weighing it: understand the worst-case scenario, and if you’re still in, you should absolutely do it.

Episode credits:

  • Producer: Nick Lembezeder
  • Co-hosts: Nick Lembezeder, Lydia Bembnister, Lauren VandeKamp
  • Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Royer, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson 

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.

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