MD Program

[Happy Holidays! Dave is on vacation, but here's a re-run to tide you over. We'll be back with new episodes starting 1/16]

[Happy Holidays! Dave is on vacation, but here's a re-run to tide you over. We'll be back with new episodes starting 1/16]

This episode comes out the day after Christmas, and is recorded the week before, so we're exploring what some describe as "the most wonderful time of the year," and what others describe as Thursday. Given that recording date, in a bit of time travel Hillary O'Brien, Laura Quast, Jenna Johnson, and LJ Agostinelli share what they want to will have gotten (because time travel is confusing for grammarians) for Christmas.

On this bonus episode of The Short Coat, we hear from Dr. John Mrachek. Dr. Mrachek is an anesthesiologist of 17 years who reached out to us at Iowa because he'd long felt a wedge being driven between doctors and their patients. He said that wedge, made of mouse clicks, political meddling, insurance middlemen, patient satisfaction surveys, and annoying electronic health records--was disconnecting physicians from their purpose. And that missing sense of purpose, he fears, is leading them to burn out. It's contributing to a frightening problem: physician suicide.

The amazing Dr. Ryan Gray, host of quite a few of the pre-med focused podcasts over at mededmedia.com (of which we, of course, are a member), joins Maddie Mix, Hillary O'Brien, Nick Lind, and Kyle Kinder as guest co-host!

A question from listener Blake--do we use Anki or Brainscape for studying?--led to a discussion of the various tools and techniques Aline Sandouk (MD/PhD student), Nick Lind, Madeline Cusimano, and Mason LaMarche (all M2s) use to shove medical knowledge into their brains. And the co-hosts get some practice with their patient communication skills using questions posed by Yahoo! Answers users.

FYI, there's new merch for charity (stickers!) at at theshortcoat.com/store! Happy Thanksgiving, bishes!

Good intentions are everywhere. Good behavior...well, that's more complicated. Such is the case with microaggressions, the term coined by Harvard University psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970 to describe minor yet hurtful comments. Pierce's original definition encompassed statements aimed at African Americans, but of course one can accidentally or purposefully put down any minority individual--women, LGBTQ+ individuals, non-white ethnicities, and more.

We on The Short Coat Podcast like to encourage people to follow their med school dreams in spite of whatever apparent obstacles stand in the way. So when we found out that Jessica McCabe, host of the popular YouTube channel How to ADHD, was coming to the University of Iowa, we were excited to get her on the show. And with co-hosts Irene Morcuende and LA--both successful medical students and ADHD brains--on hand along with CCOM learning specialist Chia-Wen Moon to prove that this obstacle can be just another bump in the road.

Today's show features multiple screams, so don't freak out. Because it's Halloweeeeeeeen! Co-hosts Hillary O'Brien, Jenna Johnson, Elizabeth Shirazi, and newbie Erica Noyes (all M1s) tell their scary med student stories for your entertainment. And Short Coat MD Wannabe has a serious question about her future, as her post-bacc program is proving harder than expected.