The Short Coat: An Inside Look at Getting Into and Getting Through Medical School Dave Etler and the Students of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine

[This episode has visual content you might find more enjoyable using YouTube Music, where you can listen with your phone in your pocket as usual, but then watch for the more visual content]

Paying for Medical School is Scary…but it’s totally doable! Listener Eden is looking ahead to how she’ll finance medical school as someone who is in the disadvantaged category of applicants. One option she asked us to talk about is the Health Professions Scholarship Program offered by the US military, and she wanted to hear from someone who is in that program. M4 Wilson Fitzgerald gave us the details, some ideas about what it’s like to be a physician in the military, the sacrifices he’s decided to make to take advantage of the program, and how it’s working out for him so far. PA faculty member Jeremy Nelson, M2 Fallon Jung, and M3 Happy Kumar helped discuss why it might not be a great idea to wait to start medical school so that you have time to save up tuition. And Dave pulls out a bunch of reels he’s been saving in his drafts because he doesn’t think they’re any good. Spoiler alert: they should have stayed in his drafts–but you can see them on our Instagram anyway!

Mentioned:

Health Professions Scholarship Program: https://www.medicineandthemilitary.com/military-medicine-101/career-pathways/

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service

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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.

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You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA

Life’s grey areas, offered up for internet discussion! Sometimes, you need someone to tell you if you’ve crossed the line. That’s why Reddit’s Am I The A**hole subreddit exists. M2 Holly Hemann brought some med-school themed samples for MD/PhD students Miranda Schene, Faith Prochaska, and PA2 Julie Vuong to react to. How compatible is MMA fighting and med school? Is it okay to get a secret horse? And isn’t an Eagle Scout the same as a doctor when you get right down to it? Let’s talk about all that!

From the discussion:

Admissions: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/10sjyd2/aita_for_almost_ruining_a_friends_med_school/

Scope of Practice: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/emu7yf/aita_i_said_my_husband_shouldnt_try_to_help_sick/

The clinical years: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/gf82i0/aita_for_letting_medical_students_observe_when_im/

Financial aid: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/ofmggp/aita_for_not_telling_my_bf_i_took_out_student/

Career uncertainty: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/clj8p5/aita_for_accepting_a_1_year_medical_school/

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 do more things on…

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat

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You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA

Project 2025 is the name of a project that hopes to serve as a blueprint for a future conservative administration that would promote natural family planning methods and reduce insurance coverage for certain contraceptives. M1s* Fallon Jung, Taryn O’Brien, and Gizzy Keeler (who are–boop boop boop–leveling up to M2s), with help from Curriculum Manager Billie Ruden, discuss what that might mean for training future MDs. Meanwhile, congress will consider a bill to make permanent several telehealth changes that were enacted to ease the healthcare crisis during the COVID crisis. KFF.org releases a helpful primer about the US healthcare system everyone should know about, and a scandal at the NIH further jeopardizes trust in science.

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 do more things on…

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat

You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA

[This episode is sponsored by Beginly Health https://beginlyhealth.com/shortcoat. The Beginly platform matches physicians and APPs with employers with complete anonymity until you’re ready for the next step. Later in this episode, founder Kristi Olsen chats with Dave about what residents should be asking employers about when planning for their post-residency gigs and beyond.]

Do everything you can to avoid the misery trap! On this episode we welcome guest Dr. Joshua Trebach, an emergency medicine physician here at Iowa. This past spring he posted on X that medicine must “lose the mentality of thinking its okay to be miserable for years (or decades) to justify it being ‘finally worth it’ in the end.”

We couldn’t agree more–live now, not later! Which is why PA2 Julie Vuong, M2 Fallon Jung, and MD/PhD student Madi Wahlen are each finding ways to reject that mentality. Indeed, medical education is changing, perhaps slowly, to reinforce the idea that just because medicine can be a difficult life doesn’t mean that you should obsessively look forward to the day it gets better. That day is a long way away, so do what you can (what you must) to be who you want to be even as you’re drinking from the firehose.

Also, we answer one of listener Mohamed’s questions on how he can jump right into his first year this fall with his eyes on patient advocacy.

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 do more things on…

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat

You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA

It’s hard to become a doctor when you’ve never met one.

It’s sometimes easy to forget from the ivory tower that relatively few American’s have, or take, the opportunity to advance beyond high school. This, of course, means that their children are also less likely to do so. Those kids that do decide to make that leap are at a distinct disadvantage to their peers whose parents did go to college. And those who advance further to attend medical school are even more rare, and are still disadvantaged compared to their peers. We call those students “first-generation in medicine,” and they’re an important group. They represent an opportunity to have a medical workforce that can serve their patients better because they understand a wider range of patient experiences and determinants of health at a gut level. PA1 Julie Vuong, M1 Amanda Litka, and MD/PhD student Faith Prochaska are first-gen in college students , and M1 Holly Hemann is first-gen in medicine. They sat down to talk with Dave about their battles to overcome the barriers to enter a medical career, what it means for their future practice of medicine, and how learning about medicine is often a gut-wrenching experience that highlights the struggles their families back home have in maintaining their own health. Meanwhile, some medical schools have gone tuition free, which should have been good news…but so far it has actually *decreased* the number of low-income students that matriculate at those schools, as well as lowering the number of students from those schools who enter primary care.



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 do more things on…

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat

You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA

[This episode is sponsored by Beginly Health, at http://beginlyhealth.com/shortcoat. Whether you're actively searching or casually exploring job opportunities, the Beginly platform matches you with complete anonymity until you're ready for the next step.]

Its Our monthly roundup of news from the margins of medicine! M1s Fallon Jung and Taryn O’Brien, M2 Jeff Goddard, and MD/PhD studnet Riley Behan Bush are on hand for our monthly news roundup. Including news that presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy’s brain was ‘eaten’ by a worm and his love of tuna sandwiches. Virtually all healthcare providers globally suffer from a clinical psychiatric disorder. Beethoven really liked lead-sweetened wine, which is probably why he was so sick and deaf. And a Tesla Cybertruck owner smashed his own finger with his vehicle’s frunk to prove that his vehicle’s frunk couldn’t smash his own finger. And can we guess what the shitty life pro tip from Reddit is? Plus lots more observations and revelations from the margins of medicine!

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 do more things on…

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat

You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to theshortcoats@gmail.com. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution

DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE

Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA