The Short Coat

Hey, sports fans! This week, Aline Sandouk, Kaci Mcleary, John Pienta, and Corey Christensen talk about sports injuries, particularly football. Lately John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens and Chris Boreland of the 49ers have brought this issue back into the spotlight, as Boreland quits the game and Urschel continues despite risking the intellectual capabilities that have enabled him to be a published mathematician.

The excitement was palpable as we waited for the clock to strike 11 a.m. CST. Or maybe it was fear, hope, dread...whatever it was, we were waiting for the results of Match Day 2015, when med students throughout the country found out where they'd be going as newly minted residents to finish their training for the next few years. After the drama had played out, and the happy (and one or two not-so-happy) faces had left the building to start celebrating, Damien Ihrig--he's the registrar here at the College of Medicine--sat down with Nathan Miller, Melissa Palma, and Jordan Harbaugh-Williams to talk about Match Day and everything that lead up to it.

Nathan Miller, Kaci McCleary, Corbin Weaver, and Eric Wilson explore the attention marijuana is getting lately from the medical and legislative/legal communities.  On the medical front, what are the uses of pot?  Do we actually know anything useful about the uses of pot?  What are the ramifications of the legalization of recreational marijuana?  Have med schools caught up with these new views on pot?  Are there other countries that have successfully legalized MJ without collapsing into anarchy or suffering from the effects of potheads' endlessly innovative bong-making drives?

Medical School is damn hard. Between the vast amounts of information to memorize and the vast amounts of concepts to understand, along with the vast amounts of time you'll spend on it all, it seems ripe for technological intervention. Can an app really help you memorize anatomy? Can a website really help you make medical decisions? Can a table really help you get organized? We recently surveyed students here at the UI Carver College of Medicine and on Reddit, asking them for recommendations and tips on using tech during medical school. Cole Cheney, Aline Sandouk, John Pienta, Lisa Wehr, and Greg Woods wade through the results.

Aline Sandouk shares her secret to stoking the fires of studying, in which bombastic music plays a part, which is great so long as it doesn't cross the line into wanting to go to war or whatever. John Pienta adds a little class by mentioning philosophers whose names Dave can't remember but which were nonetheless on fleek. Terrence Wong thinks happiness is overrated, and the rest of the team--Nathan Miller, and Kaci McCleary--seems to be more or less on board with that, perhaps saying something about how everyone's week went.

John Pienta, Aline Sandouk, and Kaci McCleary (Ethan Forsgren joined in later) debate the merits of Iowa's recently defeated measure that would have allowed PhD psychologists to prescribe psych meds.  Would they be able to deal with co-morbidities? Would an education course be enough to cope with the complexities of psychiatric medications?  Do psych meds function at a level so fundamental to the operation of the human brain that allowing people without a certain basic level of psychiatric education would be too dangerous, or are prescribing algorithms enough?

This time on The Short Coat, CCOM physical therapy student Reid Wilson stops by to tell Aline Sandouk, Cole Cheney, and Greg Woods about Second Shot. Reid is an outdoorsman and hunter. When his dog Zeus was laid up with a broken leg but clearly hankering to go out and do his thing in the woods, it occurred to Reid that Zeus likely wasn't the only one. There were plenty of people like Zeus who, despite their physical disabilities, could benefit from time in the outdoors. And so, Second Shot was born to create opportunities for people to get out there and experience the outdoors once again.

In the fall of 2014, fourth-year students Melissa Palma and Hana Khidir left Iowa City for Texas' Rio Grande Valley for an international health elective pediatrics rotation.  Their experiences there, along the porous border between the US and Mexico, brought home to them some truths that aren't well-known to most Americans. Their stories--of overwhelmed systems, children in limbo, and desperation--are  worth adding to the popular understanding of the undocumented alien

Lisa Wehr, John Pienta, and Kaci McCleary, along with producer Jason Lewis, get to interview New York Times Bestselling author Sam Kean. Mr. Kean has written several meticulously researched books that tell the stories of science and scientific advances. His most recent book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery.

Cole Cheney, Matt Maves, Aline Sandouk and Dave talk about Cole's revolutionary new idea to help antivaccers understand the consequences of their decision: create pop culture around everyday diseases! Yay! Write books, create movies, and television shows that deal with the issue! I'd watch a movie about measles in Disneyland, wouldn't you?

This week we welcome new Short Coat podcaster Caroline Sanderson who, along with Aline Sandouk, Greg Woods, and Kaci McCleary are ready represent the modern medical student. Including the feeling that all medical students get from time when they're faced with medical school, which is that they are just not good enough. Imposter syndrome, the unrealistic expectations, and maybe the pressure exerted by the newfangled integration of basic and clinical years in medical school may all play into it.

Greg Woods, Lisa Wehr, Aline Sandouk, and Cole Cheney react to the latest news from Duke University on HHMI cancer researcher Anil Potti's disgrace: that, contrary to what Duke said when the scandal broke in 2010, there was a whistleblower...and it was a medical student.  Bravery, money, Barbara Streisand, prestige, ego, fear...all these things come into play when researchers falsify, and when institutions cover it up.

Miriam Murray and Keenan Laraway--joined by Corbin Weaver and Miriam's brother Aaron Weiner--bring us tales from their residency interview trail, including Keenan's real-life "is there a doctor in the house" moment during his flight from Washington to Chicago, with a guest appearance by John Boehner.

In this episode from way back, Natalie Ramirez, Zhi Xiong, and Mgbechi Erondu got to hang out with a real Pulitzer winner (!) and a nice man, David Oshinsky, PhD. He is the author of Polio: An American Story. From the papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and other key players, Dr. Oshinsky records the U.S. public health crisis of polio and the search for a cure in the early 1950s, a frightening time for all Americans. Your Hosts This Week: [huge_it_gallery id=”11″] Listen to more great shows for medical students on The Vocalis Podcast Network. 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.

It's the last show we'll record this semester, and to mark it we'll consider what went well for our hosts in their studies, what didn't go so well, who helped them not go crazy, and what they'll be doing differently in the coming year.  Also, some very important news about how long it takes all animals to urinate (There's a poll attached to this post, so visit http://theshortcoat.com to fill it out)