Raise the Line Michael Carrese, Shiv Gaglani

Today, we're continuing our close look at clerkships and residency programs and what students can do to be successful in them with Dr. Sharon Bord and Dr. Amelia Pousson, who are both physicians and assistant professors in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where, as most listeners know, Osmosis co-founder and Raise the Line host Shiv Gaglani is pursuing his third year of medical school. “I think one of the things that students really feel when they rotate in the ED is the team-based atmosphere. Emergency medicine providers help each other be the best versions of ourselves that we can in medicine. That is really unique,” explains Dr. Bord, who serves as the emergency medicine clerkship and sub-internship director. For her part, Dr. Pousson wants students to realize there are many paths to becoming a wonderful emergency physician. “There's lots of ways to sort of peel the orange and get it just right even if the path there looks a little bit different for each person,” she says. Both agree that among the keys for success are rigorous honesty and self-reflection about your goals and limitations, and whether the specialty is a good fit. Tune in for an expansive conversation that provides valuable wisdom and fascinating insights into one of the most vital and challenging of medical specialties.

Medical school is so demanding that it’s always impressive to meet students who make time for other activities, and doubly impressive when what they devote their precious free time to is intended to improve healthcare. That’s why we’re delighted to welcome Drs. Lawsen Parker, Rebecca Wolff and Stephanie Koplitz to Raise the Line today. As they were wrapping up their terms as leaders of the Student Osteopathic Medical Association this Spring, they joined host Hillary Acer for an inspiring conversation about medical education, the role of students as advocates, and the future of healthcare. Lawsen, Rebecca and Stephanie also reflect on what being a medical student in the COVID era has been like and how it has shaped their perspectives on healthcare and leadership. Perhaps Lawsen sums it up best by telling Hillary that after his experience in SOMA, “I can’t imagine my career without being a leader, and an advocate for my colleagues, my patients and myself.” Don’t miss this opportunity to hear what is on the minds of these future leaders in healthcare.

Mentioned in this episode: https://studentdo.org/

Today’s guest is a trailblazing surgeon who performed the first successful nerve allograft, among other important achievements, but that’s actually not what host Shiv Gaglani wanted to focus on in this interview with Dr. Susan Mackinnon. After seeing her speak recently at a Johns Hopkins Grand Rounds presentation, Shiv immediately asked her to be a guest on Raise the Line because of her passion to change the culture and climate in the medical profession, partly by reconnecting it with its core mission. “We need to get it to a point where you can take the Hippocratic oath, which says if I don't agree to look after the care for prince and slave alike, I should die. We need to get back to that.” Mackinnon candidly details her own journey to being able to recognize and regulate her energy state so that she can perform at the highest level of creativity with colleagues and rise above the counterproductive “I win, you lose” mindset that often prevails in medicine. This free-flowing conversation is packed with insights gathered over a long career and offers much food for thought about how to find happiness and spur innovation at work, and the importance of self-care for providers. There’s also more book recommendations than in any other Raise the Line episode!

Mentioned in this episode:
Energy Leadership by Bruce Schneider

Taking the Leap by Pema Chodron

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

There are more than 2,600 colleges and universities with nursing degree programs in the United States, offering a mix of options from associate-level degrees to doctorates. Ensuring that those programs deliver high-quality education is the focus of today's guest, Kathy Chappell, PhD, RN, the CEO of the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, also known as ACEN. “We have this regulatory compliance function as an accreditor, but at the end of the day, it's about high-quality education for nurses. We want their students to excel so it's really our job to be their support and partner in understanding and meeting the standards,” Chappell tells host Hillary Acer. The veteran clinician and educator says ACEN is also assuming the role of partner in the broader cause of addressing the nursing shortage by using its influence to support the expansion of education programs, which she thinks should be a national priority. “I would consider it to be a public health crisis. I really do. I think it's as critical as the COVID pandemic.” This is a great scan of nursing education that includes a discussion of international accreditation, interprofessional education and the challenges nursing programs face in preparing students for a very demanding profession.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.acenursing.org/

When Raise the Line host and third year medical student Shiv Gaglani witnessed the creation of a “heart song” at the bedside of a terminal patient during his recent neurology clerkship, he immediately wanted to know more about the clinical applications of music therapy and realized the Osmosis audience would want to as well. That’s why we’re happy to bring you this fascinating episode featuring Shiv’s interview with Kerry Devlin, MMT, a senior music therapist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine. “I like to describe music therapy as a relational therapeutic encounter. Music is both the tool that I'm using as a music therapist, but it's also the medium that we're working in. And we're using that tool and that therapeutic medium to travel together to work towards someone's individualized healthcare goals,” Devlin says. In the case of dying patients, she creates music that incorporates recordings of their heartbeat and breath sounds with their favorite song and gives the result to the family as a keepsake. For other patients, she adapts her work to suit their clinical situation such as taking a rhythmic approach with people dealing with movement disorders or singing with someone with Parkinson’s disease to help them maintain articulation. As you’ll learn, the applications are wide ranging and include group work as well as one-on-one sessions. This is a meaningful and memorable episode you won’t want to miss about a powerful therapeutic tool whose use is growing.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-music-and-medicine

We've had the pleasure of speaking to nursing leaders at a variety of health systems and at nursing schools on past episodes of Raise the Line, but today we're going to zoom out for a big picture perspective on the profession and its current and future challenges and opportunities with Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, RN, MBA, president of the American Nurses Association, which advocates for the nation's 5.5 million RNs. In a frank assessment, Mensik Kennedy says nursing is actually not in need of new ideas to solve the problems it faces. “We've known about the solutions for decades, but yet we for some reason or another have not put those solutions into play,” she explains to host Hillary Acer. Mensik Kennedy thinks the slow pace of progress on issues such as staffing challenges, workplace violence, DEI, burnout and wellbeing can be attributed in part to the fact that only 5% of hospitals have a nurse on the board of directors. “When decisions need to be made, nurses' voices often are not heard or at that table to make needed changes.” Don’t miss this chance to hear a wealth of insight on the true value of nurses from a leader recognized nationally as one of the 100 most influential people in healthcare, and be sure to stay tuned to learn about an innovative “tribrid” model of delivering care.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.nursingworld.org/ana/