The Short Coat Podcast

Medical schools' mission is to create doctors that treat patients. In that context, the options provided for trainees who don't see that as their own mission may be limited. However, those options do exist--should schools acknowledge them? Should schools even promote those options to their students? And listener Nicole asks what prerequisites she can take at a community college, if any.

* “Cuddles” worries that he can’t be a research MD if he doesn’t get into an allopathic med school due to his low MCAT. But is that really the problem? * Can osteopaths be academic (research) physicians? * Dave gives his co-hosts a pop quiz on old time remedies after learning chimps may be practicing folk medicine.

Listener Valerie's pre-med advisor still haunts her years later, despite a stellar recovery from academic disaster. We got hammered by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers on our Instagram. Will our response get the same result? The co-hosts and Dave celebrate the upcoming Valentines Day observance--can we guess what our SOs and parents think of us, Newlywed Game style?

Folk rock god Neil Young and others have removed their music from Spotify, which hosts Joe Rogan's controversial podcast over his discussions with COVID and vaccine deniers. Does that actually accomplish anything, or is it too late to win over the hesitant? And we play Kiss, Marry, Kill: Medical Specialties Edition.

Whether it’s a class assignment, a personal statement, or a scholarship essay, students are often commanded to reflect on their experiences. Reflection is can be a useful part of understanding what you are becoming. But what that means and how to do it are frequently not well defined. Our M4 co-hosts discuss whether their fears about the residency application process were well-founded or just wheel spinning.

Listener Riley wants some suggestions on experiences that will help him grow while he pursues his path to medicine. We discuss some comments from YouTube on female urologists and male patients. That leads to a discussion on why hospitals default to environments for their adult patients which are downright icky.

If your undergraduate studies in a different field lacked a certain enthusiasm but you’ve now decided to pursue medicine, it can be difficult to know where you’ll stand with admissions committees. Fortunately, adcomms don’t just look for perfect grades and unwavering and early certainty from med school candidates on their path to medicine. We discuss a great way to fill a hole in what your school teaches–create a course on the subject!

Doctors who practice community medicine make more than academic physicians (sometimes lots more). As it often does, the question of which to choose depends on which aspect of each you can live without. The co-hosts also visit with Santa, because Dave’s been naughty, to answer pop quiz questions on holiday crimes.

If you want to be an author on a publication, you’ve got to be open with your lab about your goals. Go into research with the aim of improving your skills, and know exactly what skills you want to work on. Some kinds of research are easier to do and get published in medical school.

Happy Thanksgiving! We discuss the MD/PhD life, and the jobs that will prepare a hopeful MD/PhD student while also giving the admissions committees something to love. We diss Thanksgiving while still loving it, including a special Turkey Day pop quiz.

Medicine is filled with both the momentous and the prosaic. Yet every interaction is a chance to process and understand the impact one person can both have and be subject to. Dr. Campbell suggests students start journaling their experiences early. Not only might this lead to a lovely book of essays near the end of a career, but it's also a great tool to track the fleeting experiences that will much sooner make a great personal statement!

Puzzled by the interviewer's question? You can fumble around with the answer, or answer a question that wasn't asked. Did the Electronic Residency Application Service screw some applicants (again)? We get to know this week's cohosts using interview questions they might actually enjoy answering.

A question Dave found on reddit inspired this week’s topic: is there any program or school that is “out of your league?” Co-hosts recap their recent residency interview experiences. We practice answering absurd residency interview questions.

We discuss the many uses (real or potential) of capsaicin as we taste hot sauces from some random multipack co-host AJ had lying around. The co-hosts fight each other with words in a game of Megabattle. Warning: cartoonish violence is described. If you don't like the through of being stabbed by flaming antlers, you might want to skip this one.

The experience of job hunting for a residency position is unlike any other. It's way easier to donate bone marrow than many think. Dave stuffs the episode with Squid Game references in the hopes that various algorithms love us.

The Physician Assistant can do most things an MD can do, aside from prescribing certain kinds drugs, and they don't usually practice independently. Iowa's interesting because PA students train with MD students during their didactics. This close contact means that trust is established early between the two professions. PAs must amass so many hours of clinical activity before they enter school that they start with MUCH more experience than MDs usually do.

You may have heard of the dean's letter. It's sent to all residency programs, one of the things they'll use to choose who to invite for an interview. But do you know what's in it...and that it's creation begins on your first day of med school? YouTube announces blanket ban on vaccine misinformation, and axes the biggest misinformation peddlers. And, can The Short Coats pass the 2021 IgNobel Prize Winners Quiz?

Married couples applying to a school together are really a bonus for schools, all other factors being equal. We discuss Niki Minaj's cousin's friend's testicles, because that's a thing we do now. And Wiki How has interesting illustrations--can we guess the article?

We talk with a listener about how she can find a school that is friendly to non-traditional students. Should we bringing wooly mammoths back to life? Is talking about people who engage in questionable COVID treatments just adding to the problem?

Medical students can use their music background to enhance their education. Playing together and improvising is great practice for working in teams. The mental health benefits of playing or singing are huge--it's impossible to play or sing without forgetting your cares.