Audio

Normalizing Human Behavior, Transvaginal Speakers, and Deflating Outsized Egos

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Photo by Bexx Brown-Spinelli

John Pienta, Cole Cheney, Amy Young, and newbie Rob Humble join Dave to discuss the recent winter break, the Rose Bowl, and Stanford’s half-time band performance.  We discuss doctors who are non-compliant with their own recommendations for patients.  Is that something they should be condemned for, or is it human nature?  And when patients are non-compliant or engage in risky behavior, should docs acknowledge that as normal human behavior and avoid shaming them for it? Continue reading Normalizing Human Behavior, Transvaginal Speakers, and Deflating Outsized Egos

Losing the white coat, psych fears, and Internet questions answered

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short-coat-petrie-dish2Cole Cheney returns from our state capital, where he’s been doing his clerkships at our kind-of satellite campus (more about this program specifically is here, if you’re interested). He and Kaci McCleary, John Pienta, and Rachel Schenkel talk about the differences between doing rotations in a teaching hospital and doing them in a community hospital. For example, how are community hospital patients different? And in that setting, what does it really mean if your patient is non-compliant? Cole reveals that he’s ‘afraid’ he’s going to love psychiatry and wants to know: are other students also wary of the specialty? We talk about the downsides of the field, as well as the rather big professional and caregiving upsides.
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Karma Bro, A Trumped-Up Doctor’s Note, and Sleepless in The Saddle

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Just doing his job? Photo by stevendepolo

After Martin Shkreli’s arrest, John Pienta, Marc Toral, Greg Woods, and Amy Young, discuss why Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli is so hated, given that capitalist enterprises have profit as their overarching goal–hasn’t he just done his job?  Meanwhile, two ongoing clinical trials have been experimenting on human subjects without consent. Those subjects: residents and their patients.  The experiment: what happens if hospitals return to the longer hours that prevailed for residents before they were restricted in 2011? We explore the limitations of consent, residents’ satisfaction with their working conditions, how many residents may not feel that restricting their hours is best for their patients, and what working and being a patient at an academic medical center means.

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Their Patients Won’t Know What Hit Them.

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Oh, wait…never mind. Photo by Celestine Chua

Second-years Kaci McCleary, Marc Toral, Corbin Weaver, and Aline Sandouk are about to finish their didactic studies in the curriculum and embark on their clinical clerkships!  At long last, they get to work with patients.  Among the questions they face: is it better to put yourself out there during clerkships?  Or keep your head down? And are they nervous? Maybe a little, but there was plenty of health news this week to distract themselves with, including a Harvard study that provides evidence that one’s stress and one’s health may be unrelated.

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Guns and Research

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Why are people shooting up the place? I guess we can never know! Photo by Martin Laco Photography

Even though Dave’s in NYC, he still finds a way to call it in (pun intended) for a show with Kaci McCleary, Corbin Weaver, John Pienta, and Jason Lewis. We discuss the possibility that most medical abstracts are at best wishful thinking and at worst fraudulent. And speaking of research, physicians get it together to petition congress to start treating gun violence as a fundable research topic for the CDC.
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Recess Rehash: Recorded in the Nude

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Photo by half alive – soo zzzz

Thanksgiving happened last week, so enjoy this re-run! This time, Dave is on vacation, but John Pienta, Aline Sandouk, Cole Cheney, and Kaci McCleary didn’t let that stop them. Thanks to Intern Cory, they were able to carry on without him (*sniff*). Kaci and Aline review their first year: was it fun? I bet you know the answer to that one. How did it change them? What did they discover during the experience? How did they cope? What choices did they make, and how did that affect their well-being? And John and Cole clue them on what they’ll face next year.
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Replaced by a bird.

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photo: a turkey stuffed by an octopus, natch.
Cthurkey lives! Photo by @damana, used with permission.

This Thanksgiving, why not enjoy a Cthurkey while you contemplate the many health hazards embodied by America’s favorite celebration of gluttony?  And if you are a future radiologist, you might be as demoralized as Ellie Ginn, Tony Rosenberg, Dylan Todd, and Kaci McCleary were to learn about a UIowa/UC-Davis study that finds pigeons are just as good at it as you’ll ever be.

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A deadly pile of potatoes

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Photo by Nisha A

Lisa Wehr, Kaci McCleary, Dylan Todd, and Marc Toral discuss things of much import, such as why Dave’s iPad lock screen is a pile of dangerously toxic potatoes, and why it’s important to use the correct pronunciation of gyros but not other foods from foreign lands.  Also, uterus transplants are about to become a thing surgeons do in the US.

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From a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

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Photo by creativedc

Tony Rosenberg, Alex Volkmar, and Doug Russo indulge their Star Wars geekery with Dave, entertaining the various Internet theories of Luke’s and Jar Jar’s importance, while Ellie Ginn sits in the corner wondering what they’re talking about.

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Science stubbornly refuses to be easy

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Photo by dnak

Cory has found something to enable Dave’s plan to hang a portrait of himself somewhere in the medical school, which leads (somehow) into a discussion of Corbin Weaver’s deep loathing for visitors of the Louvre and Kaci McCleary’s similar feelings for commercial art. And Corbin shares with Kaci, Marc Toral and Dylan Todd a very special experience she had with a patient that really enabled her to experience a patient’s point of view…from about floor-level.
Continue reading Science stubbornly refuses to be easy