Happy new year! We kick off 2019 with a conversation about social justice, implicit bias, social determinants of health, and patient advocacy with the course director of our Social Justice elective, Dr. Darlene Robinson, and third year medical student Bre Tracey. We talk about what advocacy means, why it’s so important for us as clinicians, and where to begin if the endeavor feels too overwhelming at first.
Resources:
AAMC Government Affairs and Advocacy
Jama Oncology article by Dr. Darlene Robinson – The Patient I Thought I Knew
We've got another special episode for you: an in-depth, personal conversation with Dr. Rana Awdish, pulmonary and critical care physician and author of the incredible memoir, In Shock. She shares her experiences as a young, critically ill patient in her own hospital and what she learned from that harrowing time. We also explore why doctors become jaded and what it means to really connect with other human beings, even when it's hard. This is one of our all-time favorite conversations. It originally aired on the Hippo Education podcast Primary Care Reviews and Perspectives.
How is being a health care consumer like buying a TV? If we all need car insurance in order to drive a car, why is health insurance so controversial? In this episode, our own MS4 Daniel Imas runs the show with Professor Diane Hoffmann from the University of Maryland School of Law and Dr. Neda Frayha. Listen in and join their discussion about the health care markets and how physicians can help our patients navigate this stressful landscape.
We have a very special episode for you today! Dr. Paul Offit is a world-renowned vaccine expert and pediatric infectious diseases specialist who has been on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and 60 Minutes, among many other shows. He just happened to go to the University of Maryland for medical school, and he is passionate about educating others on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He sat down with our own Dr. Neda Frayha, as well as her friend and colleague Dr. Solomon Behar, to share tips and tools for how we can communicate more effectively with our patients who may be skeptical about vaccines. This conversation was recorded for and originally aired on the Hippo Education podcast Primary Care Reviews and Perspectives.
One year ago, we aired one of our favorite podcast episodes to date: a candid and funny perspective on the residency interview process with Dr. Hillary Hosier. At the time of our conversation, Hillary was a graduating medical student. Now, she's in her Ob/Gyn residency at Yale, and her words of wisdom about interview season are as relevant as ever. From packing dryer sheets to creative stalling tactics if you get asked a difficult question, Dr. Hosier tells it like it is.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Step 1 were the last standardized exam you ever had to take? Of course it would! But the reality is that Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) is lurking right around the corner. In this episode, we break down Step 2 CK with two wonderful guests: Ms. Jennifer Llewellyn, Academic Support Coordinator for the Office of Medical Education, and MS4 Nora Loughry, who offers us her crucial student perspective on this exam and how to prepare for it. Get ready to bust some myths and learn some pearls when it comes to CK.
Our last episode featured the obstacles and adventures Dr. Olga Ioffe faced as she immigrated to the United States and began her medical training all over again. In this episode, we continue our conversation and learn more about impostor syndrome, whether a specialty choice is like a soulmate, and the one memory from Dr. Ioffe’s journey from the Soviet Union that continues to haunt her dreams.
In January 2017, the journalist Julia Ioffe published an article in The Atlantic about her family’s journey from the Soviet Union to the United States as refugees. She wrote about her mother, a pediatric ear, nose, and throat surgeon, who had to flee her home country with her two young daughters due to religious persecution. Her mother is none other than Dr. Olga Ioffe, Professor of Pathology and well known educator at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Sometimes, the people we see every day have incredible stories to share. This is one of those stories.
In medical school and residency, it's hard to lift up and see the long-term view of your career. Dr. Sandra Quezada remembers that feeling. Since then, she has had an adventure-filled path to the career she enjoys now, which includes so many components she loves: inflammatory bowel disease, medical school admissions, medical Spanish, and now diversity and inclusion within medical education. Find out how she pursued individual passions to hit the jackpot in her career.
It’s time for part 2 of our series on the residency application process! In this episode, Dr. Donna Parker and Dr. Joe Martinez will cover how to actually select programs that could be the right fit for you, recent changes in the residency application landscape, interviewing tips, and OSA resources to help you along the way. Applying to residency is a big, sometimes overwhelming process, but this episode (along with episodes 15, 21 and 24) can help make it all a little easier.
As 4th year medical students celebrate the Match and look forward to new adventures, it’s time for 3rd year students to jump on the wild ride that is the residency application process. We’ve got you covered with this series on what you need to know for this momentous and sometimes anxiety-provoking journey. In part 1, Dr. Donna Parker and Dr. Joe Martinez will explore how to maximize your early 4th year schedule, whom to ask for letters of recommendation, how to craft a personal statement, and just what on earth is the MSPE? Buckle your seatbelts, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride.
Resources:
OSA Residency Application Manual: http://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/osa/Residency-Application-Manual-/#d.en.149536
Careers in Medicine: https://www.aamc.org/cim/
NRMP: http://www.nrmp.org/intro-to-main-residency-match/
Alright, here it is: the topic you’ve been asking for since the podcast first launched. Money. Debt. Your financial health as you plan for the future. We solicited your questions and posed them to Ms. Patricia Scott, the head of financial aid for the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, and Dr. Phil Dittmar, Assistant Professor of Medicine and frequent speaker on personal finance management as a practicing physician. We’ll dive into tools for creating a smart budget, the pros and cons of loan refinancing, strategies to achieve financial health in the future, and so much more.
Work-life balance is a fuzzy concept and elusive goal for many medical students and doctors alike. How do we achieve our academic and professional goals while still having enough time for family, friends, and hobbies? Is this even possible? We ask Dr. Rana Malek, an incredibly productive and accomplished clinician educator and endocrinologist who is also a caring and devoted family member and friend, how she manages to do it all. Some of her tips include breaking up your day into shifts, building the right team around you, and letting go of the idea of perfection.
January is a time for new year’s resolutions, wintry weather, and creating rank lists. For fourth-year medical students around the country, it all comes down to this: submitting a rank-ordered list of residency programs where you hope to match. How do you craft a rank list? What’s the etiquette for communicating with program directors about your top choices? What if you’re in the couples match? And just what is SOAP? Deep breaths: in this episode, Dr. Donna Parker and Dr. Joe Martinez explain it all. Come along as they take us on a journey through rank lists, SOAP, and Match Day itself.
One of the most requested topics for this podcast is how to pick a specialty. In this episode, our last of 2017, we begin a conversation about how to choose a career path. Our guest is Dr. Beth Lamos, an endocrinologist and future faculty member in the OSA! Also in this episode: a personal announcement from our host and producer, Dr. Frayha. Wishing all our listeners a happy holiday season and a joyful, healthy 2018!
Dr. Nirav Shah wears many hats: course director, fellowship program director, pulmonologist, intensivist, and researcher, not to mention husband, father, and an active member of his community of friends and family. His path to medicine started off with a major setback, and his positive attitude and work ethic have propelled him forward ever since. In this episode, we'll get to know Dr. Shah and learn about his career decisions, important mentors who've helped him, and how he finds meaning and joy in his life.
Health care policy has been all over the news in 2017. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of this year, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has been a major focus for President Trump and some members of the U.S. House and Senate. In this episode, Dr. Norman Retener explains current events in health care policy (think AHCA, BCRA, skinny repeal, and Graham-Cassidy) in a way that's clear, understandable, and applicable to all of us as we care for patients. As usual, this conversation between Dr. Retener and Dr. Frayha reflects only their views and does not represent the School of Medicine or the University of Maryland at large.
“There are opportunities for failure around every corner.” That’s a quote from John Allen, one of our contributors and storytellers for this episode on disappointments, mistakes, and that awful feeling of failure. In this episode, we continue our conversation about setbacks in medical school and beyond, and how to move forward when you’ve failed at something. We'll hear from residents and faculty members about the moments that haunt them and the coping strategies that helped them.
The path of a physician is paved with mistakes and setbacks. Sometimes, the mistakes are small. Sometimes, they're major, even impacting the health of our patients. How can we deal with failures and mistakes throughout our career? How can we cope with feelings of guilt and disappointment? How do we keep moving forward? In this episode, we hear a StoryCorps-like conversation between Dr. Natalie O'Neill, a senior surgical resident at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and her husband, Brandon. Dr. O'Neill lets us in on all the micro-failures that feel miserable in the moment and eventually lead to learning and growth. In Part 2, we'll hear from many physicians about difficult setbacks in their own careers.
The residency interview process can be a wild ride. Whether it's the mad dash to respond to interview offers, saving money on cross-country travel, shining bright on the interview day itself, or figuring out how to rank all those programs afterwards, we've got you covered. Last winter we sat down with (now Dr.) Hillary Hosier, president of the class of 2017 and current Ob/Gyn resident at Yale. She is full of concrete, funny, practical tips to survive and even thrive on the interview trail.
So far, our podcast has focused on student experiences along the path to becoming a physician. In this episode, we'll begin to explore what it's like to be a patient. Andrea Avery is an English teacher and writer who lives in Phoenix, AZ. She and our host became friends in high school, where Andrea was a phenomenal piano player learning to deal with her diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Andrea is super smart, funny, and full of sparkling light. She tells us about the pitfalls of being a good patient, being "bi-abled," and an orthopedic surgeon who changed her life with a game of tic-tac-toe. Through her stories, she sheds light on what it's like to be a patient, and how med students and physicians can be their best selves as care providers.
For 45 years, Art Cohen has been an alcohol and drug abuse counselor at the University of Maryland Medical Center, helping our sickest and most complex patients through the darkest times in their lives. If you walk around the hospital with him, you'll feel like you're with a celebrity. Patients, nurses, custodial staff, doctors, the person who sells you your cup of coffee in the morning - they all come up to Art, hug him, laugh about life. That's because he makes every person feel valued and important. Art is retiring, and it's hard to imagine our medical school and hospital without him. In this episode, we learn about Art's life, why he was a "bad kid," how his own life changed after a difficult few years, and how he knew that helping people with addictions was his passion. He also shares his approach to interviewing and caring for patients, as well as a few memorable patient stories. He tells us it's not easy to say goodbye to a place after 45 years. For everyone who knows Art, it's definitely not easy to say goodbye to him.
What exactly IS the OSA? And who are the OSA deans? In this episode, we introduce you to... us! Drs. Parker, Martinez, and Frayha answer student questions, dive into the role of the Office of Student Affairs, and share some stories about our own lives. Think family, hobbies, regrets from residency, our favorite parts of working in the OSA, and how we landed in academics in the first place. Get to know us better, so we can get to know you better.
We love to cover transitions in this podcast. Transitions in medical education like the leap to third-year clerkships, or from med school to internship. Today, we are taking it back to the very beginning of the journey. Our new first years are starting soon, and the entire world of medical school will be new to them. To help welcome them to the family, today’s episode has advice, tips, and happy memories from class of 2020 president Brigit Baglien as well as our OSA deans. This is where it all begins.