The Short Coat: An Inside Look at Getting Into and Getting Through Medical School

The Students of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
  • 4.7 (309)
  • Education
  • Updated Weekly

The HONEST guide to medical school, featuring real students from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine–skip this show if you’d rather not know (and hate laughter)!

  1. May 28

    From EKG Meltdowns to OSCE Roller Coasters (or Treadmills): '25-26 Med School Vibes Recap

    The Carver Carnival is the Carver College of Medicine's unofficial exhale — an end-of-year celebration where students who have been running on caffeine and anxiety for nine months can finally look up from their notes. In an unusual move, the Short Coat took its mic into the crowd and asked what these med students actually learned. The EKG crisis that resolved by Thursday, the anatomy confabulations that somehow pass, and the therapy dogs reveal a recurring theme: medical school is both harder and more fun than you might expect, the competition is a myth (at least, here), and the best thing you can do the hour before your next exam is probably go to the gym instead of studying. And the financial aid guy in the dunk tank sends memes at the end of bad-news emails.

    31 min

  2. May 21

    MD/PhD: The Long Game of Medicine and Research

    Riley Behan-Bush found the MD/PhD program through a Google search. Hannah Van Ert had already started a career in nursing before a research lab changed her path completely. Eight years (!) of combined medical and scientist training later, they're in their final stretch — and it often didn't feel like a long slog of schooling. They sit down with MSTP faculty Darren Hoffman, PhD, and Martha Carvour, MD/PhD (CCOM Class of 2012) to talk about how it works, what this path actually costs, who gets access to it, and whether federal funding cuts are about to make it a lot harder to find out.

    1h 2m

  3. May 14

    Haunts and Hot Takes

    For the full list of our favorite places, visit https://theshortcoat.com/haunts. Iowa City is small enough that you can bike from the hospital to a wood-fired pizza place and back before your study group notices you're gone — but it's also weird and big enough that you can spend your first semester missing half of what makes it worth being here. If you're heading to Iowa City this fall, this episode gives you six months of discovery in about an hour--visit https://theshortcoat.com/?p=23180 for the list! Then the group offers their hot takes on med school life: whether ceremonies are designed for students at all, whether shadowing requirements are an equity problem, and whether students who hit a wall should be able to master out (it's possible, but it's also not on the website).

    1h 11m

  4. May 11

    Medical Students Judge Reddit’s Messiest Dilemmas (AITA)

    Dave and his M1 co-hosts Lily Schmidt, Melia Patrick, Jonah Albrecht, and Anna Royer, take a field trip to Reddit's AITA sub— because self-reflection is not usually how people figure out if they're the problem. Four posts, four verdicts, and get genuinely sidetracked in the best way: there's a chlamydia anecdote Dave shares, a philosophical debate about whether watching movies at 2.5x speed makes you a bad partner, and a surprisingly earnest conversation about what med students actually owe their families when they become the designated "medical person" in the room. And (med school parents, take note) a doctor-mom posts about telling her struggling pre-med daughter she isn't cut out for medicine--and Reddit tears her a ne...helps her understand why that's not the best approach.

    44 min

  5. May 7

    Their Last Free Summer: How Four M1s Are Spending It

    Four medical students— Lily Schmidt, Melia Patrick, Jonah Albrecht, and Anna Royer— talk through how they landed on their "last free summer ever" plans: research fellowships, a genetics scholars program, global health immersion in Ecuador, Colorado fourteeners, and the lingering question of whether any of it actually matters for residency. Jonah is off to Ecuador in part to avoid a lab. Lily is in a clinic implementing joint-capture software partly because she can't do chart review without going sideways. Melia is doing genetics because she actually likes the patient population. Sure, they're all deciding to do something med school adjacent. But they are exercising the option to choose the focus of their attention in this last summer of life at the margins of medicine.

    44 min

  6. Apr 30

    The Doctor Doesn't Know Either: Inside the Diagnostic Crisis

    The feedback loop that would make doctors better diagnosticians doesn’t exist. Louise walked five minutes. Then her legs turned to stone. She stood at the side of the road, waiting for them to work again—and nobody figured out why for thirty years. Author and New York Times Health and Science Opinion Editor Alexandra Sifferlin has spent years as a journalist fielding emails from patients who couldn’t get a straight answer from medicine—not because their doctors were incompetent, but because diagnosis is harder, messier, and more difficult to do in 15 minutes than anyone wants to admit. Her book The Elusive Body: Patients, Doctors, and the Diagnosis Crisis traces the problem from rural Kentucky to the NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Network, and her conversation with M4 Jeff Goddard, M1 Madelyn Klemmensen, and M2 Zach Goddard goes deep on the mechanics of how diagnostic errors actually happen: availability bias, the missing feedback loop, specialty tunnel vision, and the slow erosion of trust that pushes patients toward people selling them supplements. The students here aren’t just asking sympathetic questions, although Jeff is literally a character in the book, something Dave found out in real time on this episode. They push on the hard stuff: when is a placeholder diagnosis ethical, whether AI will save us or become a crutch, and what do you actually do about a healthcare system where the patient bounces between docs who don’t have answers. What they keep landing on is uncomfortable—medicine doesn’t have great solutions to this, but the relationship between patient and physician might matter more than the technology of medicine. Solving the diagnostic crisis might mean uncomfortable, expensive changes. Episode credits: Producer: Jeff Goddard Co-hosts: Zach Grissom, Madelyn Klemmensen Guest: Alexandra Sifferlin, https://www.alexandrasifferlin.com/ Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Roger, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson  The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions. 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 need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!) The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening! 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. AI disclosure: Voices of host, co-hosts, and guests are human.  Some other voices–such as listener questions or questions/comments from the internet–may be AI generated.

    1h 10m

  7. Apr 23

    Blechardy Returns: Trivia, Wet Dog Beans, and Bad Guesses

    When the prize for a correct answer might be a poop-flavored jelly bean, getting it wrong is the best strategy. What if you answer a trivia question about 2,600-year-old cataract surgery correctly, and your reward is reaching into a box of jelly beans that might taste like dead fish — and you can’t lie about it? Ah, the question no one asked. Well, the answer is here! Blechardy is back, this time in Jelly Bean Mode — where every correct answer earns you a mystery BeanBoozled jelly bean that could be peach or could be barf. PA professor Jeremy Nelson and learning community manager Cody Pritchard team up against first-year Physician Associate student Tyler Mills, second-year med student Alexis Baker, and PA1 student Megan Renner. The categories: ancient medical procedures, misunderstood body parts, legends of medicine, internet memes from 2010–2020, and general knowledge. The chaos starts immediately when nobody can figure out what ancient healers packed wounds with (honey and moldy bread, for the record), and it only escalates from there. Fixing cataracts in 600 BCE, the ancient theory about what the other testicle does, the gland who’s name means “mucus” — mixed in with memes and the Mandela Effect. Jeremy buzzes in confidently and wrong more than once, Tyler steers the ship repeatedly into icebergs, and Alexis can’t quite tell if her jelly bean is genuinely bad or just a flavor she doesn’t like. The real winner? Probably the audience, who gets to watch five adults negotiate whether toothpaste-flavored candy counts as yummy. Oh, and Dave. Dave wins, too, because he only had to eat one gross bean at the end or people would have rioted. Everyone else? Hosed. Episode credits: Producer: Dave Etler Co-hosts: Jeremy Nelson, Cody Pritchard, Megan Renner, Tyler Mills, Alexis Baker Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Roger, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson  The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions. 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 need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!) The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening! 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. AI disclosure: Voices of host, co-hosts, and guests are human.  Some other voices–such as listener questions or questions/comments from the internet–may be AI generated.

    54 min

  8. Apr 16

    "Ego Death?!" M4s Talk Audition Rotations

    How Away Rotations play into getting that dream residency Among all the strange things about medical school, there’s the so-called “away” or “audition” rotation. Recently matched M4s Aditi Katwala, Hend Al-Kaylani, Lena Volfson, and Kristin Davis talk about what it’s like to leave CCOM for weeks at a time to visit another hospital. Maybe they want to experience some new things there they wouldn’t have seen at Iowa. But also, it’s often about showing off their med-student skills for a residency program they might match with in another part of the country. Spoiler–that’s not exactly how it worked out for them, but they learned a whole lot and ultimately that’s the point. This episode will clue you into the strategies, reasons, benefits and limitations of doing an advanced rotation away your home medical school. In addition, we have our usual laughs along the way. Also, we play our own special med school edition of That Escalated Quickly, in which the crew give their creative answers to a prompt based on their secret numbers from 1 to 10, then an organizer try to rank those responses from lowest to highest intensity. It’s a game where thoughtful discussion and pandemonium hold hands! Episode credits: Producer: Hend Al-Kaylani (main topic), Cyrus Barati (game) Co-hosts: Lena Volfson, Kristin Davis, Aditi Katwala Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Roger, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson  The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions. 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 need to know more about you! https://surveys.blubrry.com/theshortcoat (email a screenshot of the confirmation screen to theshortcoats@gmail.com with your mailing address and Dave will mail you a thank you package!) The Short Coat Podcast is FeedSpot’s Top Iowa Student Podcast, and its Top Iowa Medical Podcast!  Thanks for listening! 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. AI disclosure: Voices of host, co-hosts, and guests are human.  Some other voices–such as listener questions or questions/comments from the internet–may be AI generated.

    1h 13m
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The HONEST guide to medical school, featuring real students from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine–skip this show if you’d rather not know (and hate laughter)!

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