Common Sense Medicine: Recent Episodes
Shree Nadkarni
Join Shree Nadkarni as he goes through life, testing ways to be happier, healthier, and finding his own passion through interviewing interesting people in the world.
Dr. Sutterer is a 4th year physical medicine and rehabilitation resident physician and will begin a sports medicine fellowship this summer. He is also a YouTuber with nearly 450,000 subscribers on his channel where he provides educational videos about sports medicine and injury analysis. You’ll want to listen if you’d like to hear about his experience starting a YouTube channel focused on sports medicine, his opinion on performance enhancing drugs and how physicians should think about them, and how he makes his videos while also being a full time resident physician of physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Today, I’m interviewing Brett and Jared Dashevsky. They’re brothers, and a dynamic duo who run a media company called Healthcare Huddle. If that’s not enough for you, Brett is also a project manager at Capital One, and Jared has a Masters in Healthcare Systems Engineering and is a current medical school student. Jared used his foundations in healthcare innovation to build his weekly newsletter which he runs with Brett and his medical school classmate, Harrison Kaplan. Since its inception in 2019, Healthcare Huddle has grown it's audience to around 15,000 health professionals and students. I’m excited to have them on because, well, I am one of those 15,000 readers. It’s important to stay informed about healthcare and they do it with bite sized pieces that you can read in 5 minutes. Even in medical school, I am able to keep in front of the news cycle about the COVID-19 updates because Brett, Jared, Harrison, and the whole team at Healthcare Huddle has me covered. If you want to learn more go to shreenadkarni.com/hchuddle to register and become part of the “Huddlers!”
Dr. Patel is on faculty at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care innovation and the Center for Health Incentives and behavioral economics, and a Staff Physician at the Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. His research focuses on combining insights from behavioral economics with scalable technology platforms to improve health and health care.
He has led more than 25 clinical trials in partnership with health systems, insurers, employers, and community organizations that tested ways to design nudges, incentives, and gamification to change clinician and patient behavior. This work includes digital health interventions using wearable devices and smartphones, and health system interventions using the electronic health record.
Today's podcast is with Shailin Thomas (@shailinthomas), who is a fifth-year student (and third year medical student) in a joint MD/JD program between Harvard Law School and the New York University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. from Yale University where he stuied cognitive neuroscience—exploring the anatomy and hysiology behind social phenomena. His interests lie at the intersection of clinical medicine and the legal forces that shape it. Prior to graduate school, Shailin worked on both the administrative and clinical sides of health care, and as a research associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
While in graduate school, he has served as a Student Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and as an Admissions Ambassador with the NYU School of Medicine Office of Admissions — helping to recruit the next generation of physician leaders. His writing has been published in a number of outlets, including the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Podcast Episode Summary * 1:16 - How he's every Asian-American immigrant's dream for their son (going to Harvard, becoming a doctor and a lawyer...need I say more?) * 2:12 - Why he decided to go into an eternity of schooling (and is deciding to go through with residency) * 8:36 - How he took his gap years and why he worked at Harvard before he became a medical student * 10:16 - How he reasons through topics in health law and how he finds topics to write about * 22:54 - The origins of health law and how we can design a better liability penalties and design framework for the healthcare system * 31:00 - How to balance deregulation in the healthcare industry with a legal solace for patients to get the right treatment * 34:51 - His opinions on healthcare coverage and how they impact patient care; how he addresses my devil's advocate comments about shielding cost from consumers and the implications of moral hazard * and more!
Today's guest is Dan Munro, who is, in his own words, "not a clinician or an economist," but he is interested in how healthcare is broken in the United States and how technology innovation and policy can solve that. He first started writing about healthcare starting as a Forbes Contributor in 2011, and Dan has since appeared in a wide range of publications. We talked about his first book, called Casino Healthcare, and many other topics. We talk about
- 1:48 - His background as an system engineer, and how that helped him get into healthcare and how it operates from a software engineering perspective
- 9:08 - How the AMA meets behind closed doors in order to price healthcare via CMS
- 13:09 - How uncompensated care can lead to higher premium rates, and tiered care (case study: Hahnemann shut down)
- 23:59 - Why he thinks that medical Education should be free from a systems level perspective
- 28:03 - Why healthcare can never be a consumer product like in other parts of our life
- 34:27 - Telemedicine and the advent of telehealth (point of care technologies, digital health technologies)
Peter A. Ubel M.D. is the Madge and Dennis T. McLawhorn University Professor of Business, Public Policy and Medicine at Duke University. A physician and a behavioral scientist, he uses the tools of decision psychology and behavioral economics to explore topics like informed consent, shared decision making and health care cost containment. He has authored over 300 academic publications, the majority of which involve empirical explorations of decision psychology as it pertains to health care. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and is a regular contributor at Forbes. His books include Pricing Life (MIT Press 2000), Free Market Madness (Harvard Business Press, 2009) and Critical Decisions (HarperCollins, 2012). His newest book, Sick to Debt, is scheduled for release in 2019 (Yale University Press). You can find his blogs and other information at http://www.peterubel.com/.
Professor Forman is a Professor of Diagnostic Radiology (and faculty director for Finance), Public Health (Health Policy), Economics and Management. Professor Forman directs the Health Care management program in the Yale School of Public Health and teaches healthcare economics in the Yale College Economics Department. He is the faculty founder and director of the MD/MBA program as well as the faculty director of the healthcare focus area in the School of Management’s MBA for Executives program. As a practicing emergency/trauma radiologist, he is actively involved in patient care and issues related to financial administration, healthcare compliance, and contracting. His research has been focused on improving imaging services delivery through better access to information. He has worked as a health policy fellow in the U.S. Senate, on Medicare legislation.
Dr. Kumar is is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Interventional Radiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He completed his fellowship training in Vascular and Interventional Radiology at the Mount Sinai system in NYC. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Interventional Radiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He mentors many residents and students interested in IRHis treats a wide spectrum of diseases using minimally invasive procedures include Peripheral Arterial Disease, venous disease, dialysis , women’s health/Uterine Fibroid Embolization, Liver cancer. He grew up in Houston, Texas and moved to New York City for residency after medical school. He has lived in NYC for 10 years. In his free time he enjoys trying new restaurants in the city, sports, traveling.
Dr. Balentine received his undergraduate degree from McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. He attended medical school at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine graduating in 1983. He completed his internship at St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia and his Emergency Medicine residency at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx, where he served as chief resident. In 1992 Dr. Balentine started practicing Emergency Medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx where he served as Residency Director and Department Co-Director. Dr. Balentine served as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of St. Barnabas Hospital and Healthcare System in the Bronx until 2014. He is Past-President of the New York Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians and Vice Chair of the New York State Board of Medicine. He has authored and edited many web and textbook chapters and was the founding medical editor of newyorkmedicaljournal.org.
Dr. Balentine is currently Dean, College of Osteopathic Medicine; Vice President, Health Sciences and Medical Affairs at the New York Institute of Technology.
Kevin is currently a postdoctoral associate the laboratory of David D. Moore, PhD, focusing on the role of lipids and one carbon metabolism-related nutrients on nuclear receptor signaling with broad relevance to both physiological and pathophysiological states. Kevin additionally is a primary collaborator for NCT03194659, a randomized, controlled trial of choline supplementation during pregnancy.
We are four medical students attending the University of Utah School of Medicine. We love Anki but found it very difficult to use at first. We originally made a few videos to help our classmates and eventually decided to keep making tutorials so we could share with all Anki users worldwide. The four of us are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believe that serving others is what brings true happiness. We hope you enjoy everything we have put together for you! My name is Tyson Burnham. I'm a second-year medical student at the University of Utah. I am originally from Arizona but have lived in Utah for the better part of 8 years. I did my undergraduate studies in neuroscience at Brigham Young University. During my studies at BYU, I took 2 years off of school to serve a mission in Argentina for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I come from a family of physicians and have known since childhood I wanted to be a doctor.
After medical school, I plan on pursuing a residency in Internal Medicine followed by additional training in Cardiology and Electrophysiology, but I understand that at this point in my career nothing is set in stone. I have always been passionate about mentorship and teaching, so when I had the opportunity to join the AnKing team, I jumped on it.
Dara Kass, MD is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, where she also serves as the director of Equity and Inclusion for the Emergency Department. After completing her residency at SUNY Downstate Medical School and Kings County Hospital, she served as faculty of Staten Island University Hospital, where she facilitated the start of their EM residency program. She previously served as the director of undergraduate medical education at NYU. As director, she introduced longitudinal career advising, innovative educational modalities, and numerous clinical experiences.
She is the founder of FemInEM, an organization dedicated to the achievement of gender equity in emergency medicine. FemInEM serves as an open access resource for women in EM, a community focused on career development, physician support, and seeing women in medicine thrive. What began as a blog is now a movement, a multi-faceted community comprised women in medicine all over the world.
Varun and Shree sit down to talk about some viewer questions that we got from Instagram and Twitter @csmedicine. We also talk about mini-medical interviews, research for high school students, and how to write a good personal statement. If you're interested in more topics like these, definitely leave a comment about what you want to hear about next!
Dr. Gopal Desai is a resident physician at the NYU School of Medicine specializing in Anesthesiology.
Varun and Shree talk about Biases against IMGs in Residency, Activism in Medicine, and why we need more rural doctors in the US.
Tricia Rae Pendergrast is a medical student at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and is interested in Pediatric intensive care and critical care medicine. She joins me to talk about medical school, and how we can dismantle barriers in medicine for people who identify as LGBTQ+. You can find her @traependergrast
Dr. Bryan Carmody writes a blog at the Sheriff of Sodium. He is a pediatric nephrologist, and an EVMS associate professor. He is an advocate for medical students and common sense. You can find him @jbcarmody
58 - Medical School in the Time of Corona, STEP 1 Woes, and Doctor Drama. Find us on @csmedicine, and commonsensemd.com
Robert Croyle, PhD, was appointed director of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in July 2003. You can learn more at https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/od/director_rc.html
Dr. Adam Biener is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Lafayette College. Previously, he was employed as an economist at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Biener's research focuses on medical care use and expenditures in the US. Specific areas of his research include the medical care costs of obesity, how the affordable care act has affected physician payments and the use of primary care, as well as racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare use. Dr. Biener received his PhD in Economics from Lehigh University in 2015.
Louise Aronson is a physician, writer, and person. Learn more about her at https://louisearonson.com/about/
Priya Kantesaria is a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Priya graduated from Rutgers University – New Brunswick, where she completed her bachelors in Genetics with minors in public health and health & society. At NJMS, Priya has focused on improving healthcare at a variety of levels. Priya has a passion for legislative advocacy. As an active member of the American Medical Association, Priya serves as the Committee on Long Range Planning Vice Chair where she works on studies & programming related to medical student debt & burnout. She serves as the NJ delegate to the House of Delegates where she represents NJ medical students. As the AAMC-OSR Northeast Legislative Chair, she focuses on developing the relationship between student-led advocacy and medical school administration. At her institution, she increases student access to pre-clinical resources by running academic support for first years and developing curriculum to teach students bleeding control. She active in the fight against sexual harassment & domestic violence through her work with the Title IX committee & the Domestic Violence Intervention Program. She believes strongly in preparing the next generation of physicians and has created curriculum for the Mini-Med School. As a future physician, she hopes to encourage physicians and patients to be active and empowered members in healthcare, whether that be through legislative action or everyday clinical care.
Travis Benson is an M1 at Harvard Medical School. Prior to medical school, Travis worked as a pipe welder for nine years. Motivated by the experience of being the child of a transgender parent and seeing the discrimination that the trans community faces in a clinical setting, Travis quit his job in 2015 to return to school to become a physician. He attended the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health and majored in Health Sciences as a non-traditional first-generation student. During undergrad, Travis was heavily involved in research. At OHSU, he conducted research on voice masculinization in transmasculine patients, created a health needs assessment study of the transgender and gender non-conforming community in Portland, and worked as a clinical researcher in a circadian rhythm lab. He also spent some time as a research fellow at the NIH as part of the Amgen Scholars program where he studied immunology. He has been heavily involved in mentoring students. As an undergrad, he founded a chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon at his school and tutored for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and athletic department. Currently, he serves as a non-resident tutor for Harvard University where he helps pre-med students navigate the application process. Currently, he is involved in phalloplasty research at Boston Children’s Hospital and cutaneous T cell lymphoma research at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He is part of the Derm Scholars program at HMS. He is one of the co-founders and moderators of the twitter chat, @MedStudentChat. He is interested in transgender health, dermatology, and bioethics, and one day hopes to combine those three interests in his career.
Dr. Jason Ryan is the creator of the website Boards and Beyond. Thousands of students from around the globe use his online videos and practice questions to prepare for the USMLE Step 1 exam. Dr. Ryan trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he also served as a chief resident. In addition to his MD, he holds a Master of Public Health degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. He has been a faculty member at the University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut for over 10 years.
Dr. Michael L. Barnett is Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Barnett received his MD from Harvard Medical School and completed a residency and fellowship in primary care and general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Barnett’s research focuses on understanding and improving the health care delivery
system with specific interests in the role of physicians in the opioid epidemic as prescribers and providers of treatment for opioid use disorder as well as studying innovative models for health
care payment and care delivery. His research has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, British Medical Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine and has received best
research of the year awards from the Society of General Internal Medicine and AcademyHealth. His research has also been featured or cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, CNN and The Economist. He is the recipient of a Career Development Award from the National Institute on Aging.
Professor Mamas trained in Medicine at the University of Oxford, undertaking an MA in Physiological Sciences in 1994 and a DPhil in Physiological sciences from 1994-1997. He completed his clinical training at the University of Oxford in 2000. Professor Mamas was appointed as Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology at the University of Manchester (2006) and completed his specialist training in Interventional Cardiology in 2012 and was appointed as a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the University of Manchester. In 2015 he was appointed as Professor of Interventional Cardiology at Keele University. Professor Mamas is an Associate Editor of Circulation Cardiovascular Interventions and a member of the E-Cardiology working group of the European Society of Cardiology.
He is also a member of the NIHR interventional procedures review panel as well as sitting on several safety endpoint committees of several national randomized controlled trials. He is the Clinical Director of the Centre for Prognosis Research at Keele University, and leads a group of clinicians, data scientists and statisticians whose research interests focus around the use of routinely collected electronic healthcare data to inform the diagnosis, treatment and clinical outcomes of real-world patients with cardiovascular disease. His group uses national audit data derived from the national cardiovascular societies at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR; https://www.ucl.ac.uk/nicor), data derived from primary care (Clinical Practice Research Datalink; https://www.cprd.com/intro.asp) as well as large datasets from the US such as the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and National Readmissions Dataset to study outcomes in patients with cardiovascular diseases. His work focuses around studying clinical outcomes, complications and assessment of treatment efficacy of interventions / medical treatments using real world data derived from the national electronic healthcare records of patients with cardiovascular disease, as well as prognostic modeling leading development of risk stratification tools used for national reporting in PCI and TAVR. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers using big data in populations with cardiovascular disease.
Cedric Dark, MD, MPH, FACEP is Founder and Executive Editor of Policy Prescriptions. A graduate of Morehouse College, Dr. Dark earned his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine and holds a master’s degree from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He completed his residency training at George Washington University. Currently, Dr. Dark is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and a Health Policy Scholar in the Center for Medical Ethics & Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. He produces a health policy podcast for the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and a column for ACEP Now.
Today, we talk with Dr. Gwen Quinn, the Livia Wan M.D. Endowed Chair and Vice-Chair of Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor in the departments of Population Health and the Center for Medical
Ethics at NYU School of Medicine. She is the chair of the departments promotion and tenure
committee.
Dr. Quinn received her Ph.D. in educational psychology from Florida State
University and did a post-graduate fellowship in public health and has post-graduate
certification in Program Evaluation and Biomedical Ethics. Her research focuses on improving
patient/family/physician communication through understanding the barriers and benefits of
health care use from a mutli- stakeholder perspectives.
Her current research and training efforts are in the areas of : Reproductive Health, Sexuality, and Fertility Preservation, Quality of Life issues in Pediatric, Adolescent & Young Adult and LGBTQ+ Cancer Populations, and Cancer Clinical Trials (including minority barriers to participation); and training researchers to conduct
research with high risk populations.
Today, we sit down with Dr. Talal Hilal, a physician who is originally from Syria. He completed his medical school training at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) campus in Bahrain in 2012. He applied for residency training as an IMG in 2013.
He did his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Kentucky, and graduated in 2016. At the time of this interview, he was chief fellow in the Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, AZ and graduated in the summer of 2019.
His clinical interests are hematology (specifically lymphoproliferative disorders), application of evidence-based medicine in clinical practice, and pragmatic trial designs.
In this podcast, Dr. Richard Frankel stops by and we talk about a varied number of sociological factors that physicians have to face - in terms of their training, their eventual job, and other factors outside their job. Dr. Frankel is a professor of medicine and geriatrics at the Indiana School of Medicine, and he researches organizational culture change, face-to-face communication, and the role of technology and its effect on the human dimensions of healthcare, especially empathy.
In addition to his research interests he has been a medical educator for the past 35 years. He was the co- director of the internal
medicine residency program at Highland Hospital/University of Rochester and also served as co-director of the Program and Fellowship in Advanced Biopsychosocial Medicine. From 2003-2013, he was the statewide director of Indiana University School of Medicine’s professionalism competency and responsible for both curriculum and remediation in this arena.
We talked about his experiences in academia and his interests around medicine, and how I could learn from different perspectives outside of just the clinical aspects of medicine.
On this episode of Vital Signs, Varun and I talk about the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi as well as our personal experiences up close and personal with death and dying.
My friend Varun and I talk about our journey in the BS/MD Program and how we got to medical school. Enjoy the next episode of Vital Signs!
A new co-host, Varun, and I talk about our experiences in our medical school program, compassion tests, and medical education. Email us at contact@commonsensemedic.com if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!
Articles discussed in this episode:
https://news.aamc.org/medical-education/article/med-school-3-years-future-medical-education/?fbclid=IwAR0YHj28mmIVMoUnK1O7cf15W3ag0b0TJk2cgPRGmcY2wcs5HinirPzttzo
https://khn.org/news/oregon-medical-students-face-tough-test-talking-about-dying/
https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2019/07/our-medical-training-has-been-outsourced.html
Today on the show we are very glad to welcome Dr. Nina Shapiro, ENT specialist and author of Hype! In our conversation we chat about her book and what inspired a general and popular publication of its kind before getting into some of our guest's experiences and opinions on the medical field at present. We discuss confirmation bias, common health concerns and the attitudes of parents towards health in the modern climate. Dr. Shapiro opens up about e-cigarettes, vaccines, online information and gender bias in medicine too. She shares some of the challenges that come with writing a book, and particularly a medically focused one, why mentorships are so important to young doctors and the troubling advice she offers encounters in her work. We finish off the episode with a few fun questions about wishes, her mission and a question that Dr. Shapiro wants to ask Shree! For all this and more, tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Confirmation bias, the influence of Google and the inspiration behind the book.
- Surprising beliefs that are widely held to be true.
- Reformulating the pyramid of health concerns.
- E-cigarettes, JUUL products and the effects that Dr. Shapiro has noted.
- The evolving attitude of parents about their children's wellbeing.
- The unrealistic debate around vaccines and legal and ethical concerns.
- Close-knit communities, the speed of outbreak and the importance of education.
- Lay press, battling fake information and Dr. Shapiro's attitude towards these.
- The most challenging elements of writing the book.
- Medical education and mentorships within any program.
- Shapiro's experience of gender bias in the medical profession.
- The professional advice Dr. Shapiro disagrees with the most.
- Shapiro's mission and what gets her out of bed in the morning.
- The three things Dr. Shapiro would wish from a genie!
- And much more!
Tweetables:
“I work in healthcare, I work with patients, I work with families, we’re exposed to a lot of information, all of us, not just doctors, all of us on a daily basis.” — @drninashapiro [0:01:04]
“I really felt that there was a dire need to write a book that was as evidence based and as non-biased as possible.” — @drninashapiro [0:01:29]
“I take care of very elective problems and I take care of severely emergency, life and death problems and everything in between. And no two days are the same.” — @drninashapiro [0:34:56]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Common Sense Medicine — http://commonsensemedic.com/
Hype — https://www.amazon.com/Hype-Doctors-Understanding-Personal-Decisions/dp/1250149304/
Dr. Nina Shapiro — http://drninashapiro.com
Dr. Nina Shapiro on Twitter — https://twitter.com/drninashapiro
Dr. Peter Attia — https://peterattiamd.com/
When Breath Becomes Air — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25899336-when-breath-becomes-air
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25589791-the-spirit-catches-you-when-you-fall-down
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation — https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
Digital Minimalism — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism
On the podcast today, I interview Dr. Joyce Kahng, a dentist practicing in Costa Mesa, California. She teaches classes in dentistry at USC and also owns a private practice called Orange + Magnolia dentistry studio. We open up with how she got interested in dentistry, to be like her mom. She didn’t really know what she wanted to do with dentistry until she completed school, she explains, like a lot of other people in medicine. She came to the General practice residency to talk to people about routine things (because she did not want to specialize) and focus on building relationships with people. Building Relationships Through Social Media This brought her to Instagram. Starting it as a tool to grow her business, she was able to more readily disperse knowledge about dentistry, like how to floss correctly. She explains that it was more authentic to her to make sure that she was able to talk about the topics that would help people on their journey throughout dentistry. We talk about how memorable moments like patient cases impacted her decisions along the way to becoming a practicing dentist as well. How Dentistry is Going to Change Although business practices are changing, Dr. Kahng is optimistic for the future. She believes that she should have had more fun during school (who doesn’t?) but she is optimistic for her future as well. The insurance companies, while they charge more for “elective” procedures, have the ability to change through advocacy in the dental community.
Today, I had the great pleasure of talking to Dr. Andrea Tooley. She is a fellow in ophthalmic plastic surgery in New York City. She is active on Instagram with the handle @dr.andreatooley. We were able to talk about how she got interested in ophthalmology, her struggles in medical school, and how she was able to use YouTube, Instagram, and other social media outlets in her professional life as an advocate for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Something cool that I learned about Dr. Tooley on the podcast was that she earned her pilot’s license at age 16, and was exposed to ophthalmology through a trip in her senior year with Orbis International, a foundation which flies to underserved nations and carries out eye surgeries on planes. As she progressed through her education, she was able to find a routine in medical school and hit the ground running as she knew that she wanted to specialize in ophthalmology from the get go. Finding a Mentor Throughout her journey, Dr. Tooley found a mentor who was willing to help her focus her passion through doing research while in medical school, and this led to other opportunities which helped her stand out. I also asked her about how she was able to study for USMLE STEP 1 while managing other projects on the side. She was able to find time by being very active when she learned; she couldn’t just re-read and highlight the books that she had to study with. Also, by writing information on the whiteboard was another method she used to get through a lot of facts in a small amount of time. Holding Doctors To a Standard Some bad recommendations that Dr. Tooley hears in the wards is that people give too much resources to study. If you are pulled in too many directions, then you are not able to focus when you are studying. Also, if you try and act like any one else, then you will not succeed - being yourself is more important than living someone else’s life. Also, getting over challenges is more about introspection and reaching out to the support systems that you have (your family and friends) rather than a specific routine. Each challenge brings adversity, and Dr. Tooley is no stranger to that fact.
My guest today is Dr. R. Peter Manes. We talk a lot about work-life balance as a doctor, how to become an ENT, and what excites him about surgery. Something that really amazes me about being a doctor is how specialized people become and how they are able to be just a handful of people in the world who know how to do the things that they do. For example, Dr. Manes is able to do endoscopic and rhinology skull base surgery, something that he had to train years to accomplish. And it is because of his efforts that people can live comfortably even though they have chronic sinusitis.
Something that I haven’t had the ability to appreciate in making these podcasts is the journey that I have had talking to different professionals, and Dr. Manes is right that it is a good time to reflect on my own journey and move ahead as I’m starting medical school.
Dr. Shannon Tapia stops by the podcast, and we talk about relationships, stand up comedy, and when to get married. It's a real talk which shows how life can take different turns when you least expect it. We started talking about how she was able to get into stand-up, and how she was able to turn bad experiences into good learning moments and her advice for women in medicine.
Something that I learned about Dr. Tapia during this podcast is her ability to not let things faze her. In a world where there is a culture of instant gratification, there is solace in the fact that she is adamant about not letting the outside world define her view of how things are going in her professional life. Also, we talked about how she planned around a family during her time in medical school, and how she planned around her boards (Step 1 and Step 2). Dr. Tapia also explained to me how "if you're a physician and a Mom, you're pretty much working 190% of the time"
Although I'm not a female pre-med student, I do understand that there are experiences that I won't ever get. However, that's the goal of this podcast: to gain perspectives that I wouldn't have gained otherwise. In this world, as Dr. Tapia says, you have to take any advice with a grain of salt -- the narrow perspective by which we see the world is limited, however, that's equally as true for other people. One of the goals of this podcast is to make sure that I am able to think, read, and write. That's not going to change as I make these podcasts and go through medical school.
If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Tapia, definitely check out her blog: http://medicineontap.net/
Have you ever wondered how to speak better and communicate more effectively? It's something that we do every day but it's getting harder and harder to do as we forget the core principles of communication and become lonelier and lonelier due to our focus on technology. I set out to search for people who could help me understand how to communicate better on the podcast or otherwise, and I stumbled into New York Speech and Vocal Coaching. My guest today is a Voice Teacher Associate, and he specializes in teaching a singing voice and is a rehabilitation specialist, which enables him to provide healing to injured singers and proper technique to avoid injury in healthy singers.
One thing that Brendan focused on was the "urgency pulse" which is getting anxiety when there is a need to speak. Speech coaching, the cognitive issues which arise when there is a need to speak is different than speech pathology, which is more of reducing a clinical condition. Brendan explained to me that my verbal ticks were because of this urgency pulse and reducing this by controlling my breathing would be helpful in future podcasts to communicate my point more clearly. This urgency pulse is due to the fight-or-flight response which we are ingrained with in an evolutionary sense.
He was able to rehabilitate his voice by taking part in the NYVC Voice Teacher Training and Certification under the teaching of Justin Stoney. In doing so, he has learned invaluable information to assist him in his voice teaching. The Voice Teacher Training has been the highlight of his career as a voice teacher and musician.
In addition to being a voice teacher, Brendan is also a licensed and certified speech-language pathologist. He is a Speech Coaching Associate at New York Speech Coaching and the Head of New York Speech Pathology. Brendan holds a Master of Arts degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Hofstra University as well as Bachelor of Arts degrees in Speech Communications and Philosophy/Religious Studies from St. Joseph’s College, where he also minored in music. We also talked about his own journey and some of the injuries that he saved himself from.
What is an endodontist? I was curious as to what dentistry entails and how I could learn more about the part of our body that physicians don't often treat, the teeth and how they connect to the whole body. My guest was Dr. Stephanie Tran, who is a New York based endodontist. She's a big game of thrones fan, something which we talk about in the podcast, but it led her to make her instagram title and bio, which is @her_holiness_the_pulp. If you're a dental student and want to learn more, message @csmedicine and we can arrange a quick Q+A!
An endodontist is basically someone who focuses on the apex of the tooth where the pulp meets the blood vessels of the gum. She works on very cool procedures which help save the teeth and reconstruct the surrounding structures of the tooth. We talked about the craziest cases she has seen in oral maxillofacial trauma, and other tooth trauma when teeth also came out of the socket!
There are a lot of specialties in dentistry as well, and so we talked about her journey in endodontics, and how she chose this one over other specialties like periodontics. However, she also appreciates these specialties and tries to learn from them as she practices. She also accelerated her training, so something that we also go into is how she was able to manage all of her studying as a college student -- some advice that I definitely needed and am going to apply as I go through my journey!
Furthermore, we talk about newer technology that's popping up in the world of dentistry. Have you ever heard of teeth being replaced using 3D technology? It's actually crazy to hear from someone in the forefront of technology in dentistry on how to make dentistry better. It's really cool to see someone who's so passionate about her work and it was a great conversation. I love to see what Dr. Tran does in the future!
Stoked to have @aliabdaal on the podcast. We were able to talk about lots of things, including his businesses and some advice for starting on YouTube. I have been following Ali for quite some time, so it was a great time to have him on the podcast to talk about some things that I see Common Sense Medicine becoming throughout my journey in medicine.
First, we talked about the video aspects of medical education. He thought it would be fun, and it would be a cool thing to start the podcast. We also talked about optimizing his productivity in medical school and tech, which he covers in his YouTube channel.
We also talked about how the UK and US differ in their structure of medical school. He was able to use his passion for coding to start a business based on his score on the BMAT (the medical entrance exam in the UK).
How often do you take care of your ears? Hearing hygiene is a thing, I learned through Dr. Marjorie C. McCullagh from the University of Michigan School of Medicine. She studies hearing loss in farmers, and gave me some tips on learning about how to put in my earplugs properly.
Something that we don’t think about often is how concerts and other sounds can affect our health down the line. Hearing is something that we take for granted, and I know that I’m definitely going to think twice when I go to a concert without earplugs after hearing what Dr. McCullagh told me can happen when you don’t take proper precautions!
We also talk about how the sound level of even common place sounds can be too much if its an “impact” vs a “continuous” noise, and other advances in hearing research and behavioral incentives for helping rural health.
Prerak is a second year medical student at Yale School of Medicine. Currently, he is in his clerkship year, where he is rotating at multiple sites and getting a better idea of what each specialty entails. Outside of school, Prerak also enjoys sharing his experiences and what he has learned through his YouTube channel! YouTube gives Prerak a way to reflect on his journey while also assists others in theirs.
Rick Pescatore is the Director of Clinical Research for the Department of Emergency Medicine at CKHS.
Dr. Kevin Jubbal is a physician, innovator, and educator. Find him on Instagram @KevinJubbalMD or @MedSchoolInsiders, or at KevinJubbal.com
Kateryna is a first generation immigrant that focuses on empowering those around her to reach a higher level of education. She grew up in a medically and educationally underserved community and would like to introduce a new perspective on medicine. Aside from medicine, she is a micro influencer and model for various companies.
Robin O. Winter, MD, MMM has been Director of the JFK Family Medicine Residency Program since 1989. Board certified in both Family
Medicine and Geriatric Medicine, Dr. Winter earned a Master of Medical Management degree at Carnegie Mellon University. He is Medical Director of JFK Hartwyck Nursing, Convalescent and Rehabilitation
Centers, and sits on their Board. Dr. Winter is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Family Medicine for Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University. He is also a Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and an Associate Professor at St. George’s University School of Medicine.
Wendell Cole, M.D. is a current Orthopaedic Surgery resident. He graduated from Morehouse School of Medicine in 2018 at the age of 24, and graduated from Georgia State University with a B.S in Biology in 2014.
Rashi Aggarwal, MD, is an Associate Professor and Program Director of Residency Training, and a Consultation Liaison Psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Aggarwal is an active researcher in the fields of stigma, resident empathy and wellness, IMG education, training and acculturation and addiction disorders in consult-liaison setting and has published extensively in these fields.
Vishal Khetpal is a third-year medical student from Oklahoma attending the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Before coming to Brown, Vishal earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015, and a master’s degree in global health from the London School of Economics in 2016. He is also a freelance writer, dissecting topics related to culture, politics, and health. He regularly contributes essays to Slate Magazine, and has also written for outlets such as TONIC (VICE’s health vertical), STAT News, and the Huffington Post in the past. He hopes to pursue a career involving medical practice, public policy, and writing for general audiences about meaningful health issues.
Biju Parekkadan is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering with a laboratory that specializes in cell, gene, and tissue engineering.
In which Shree talks to Dr. G. Keith Smith, an anesthesiologist who likes to think about mutually beneficial transfers, free market medicine, and accessibility to care. He runs a Surgery Center in Oklahoma which has revolutionized price transparency in healthcare.
In which Shree talks to Kim Sertich, a filmmaker who owns a production company in Phoenix, Arizona. She recently made a documentary about how the current healthcare system had failed her, called “Healthcare Unmasked” streaming on amazon.com. Her website is healthcareunmasked.com
Questions Covered:
- What is the documentary about and how did you get insured beforehand?
- Why did you choose the faith based program and what are the different options if you didn’t want to do a faith based program?
- Why did you choose the documentary form to convince people and do you think it worked/benefits out of the process itself?
- As a medical/college student, how do you balance the time between work and filming?
- What makes a good questions and how do you elicit a good response?
- Taking me through a day of documentary research, and thought process through each thing?
- Did you feel that you arrived at journalism or did you want to go into journalism from the get go?
- How was meeting the president?
- What are your next plans?
- How does this conversation relate to younger audiences?
- How do hospital mergers affect the career of physicians? Should they become entrepreneurs?
- What was the best/worst thing of the whole process and why was it so good/bad?
- How long did it take to complete the documentary?
- What exactly was the timeline between when you started and ended?
- How long did you think it was going to take to film the documentary?
- Before you started the interviews, how long did you research the interviews?
- What did you learn at the end of the process?
- What gets you up out of bed in the morning?
- What would be her three wishes?
In which Shree talks to Dr. Molly Rutherford, a Direct Primary Care Physician and Addiction Treatment Specialist
Questions Covered:
- What is Direct Primary Care? Why did you choose Direct Primary Care?
- What is different between direct primary care and the system which requires an ICD code?
- What was your breaking point when you realized that this system didn’t work for you?
- How does insurance play into your practice?
- Why aren’t more doctors aware of how the system works and how can we spread the word?
- What bad recommendations do you hear on rounds?
- In this climate, when there are a lot of hospital mergers, how difficult is it to stat your own practice?
- How do you manage your work-life balance as a busy doctor?
- How did it feel when you first got started in the business?
- How can you communicate with patients via email?
In which Shree talks to Dr. Christopher Sonnenday, a very accomplished transplant surgeon. We talk about books, his interest in surgery, and surgical research.
Questions covered:
- Why did you like surgery?
- What are the new hot topics in transplant surgery?
- Where is your role in the research that you had mentioned?
- What is quality and what are outcomes in transplant surgery?
- How was your training at Hopkins like?
- How did you deal with patient distrust?
- Are there any regrets that you have when you went through your medical school experience?
- Is medicine an art or a science? How much uncertainty is there in medicine?
- Who were your medical mentors?
- What gets you out of bed in the morning?
In which Shree talks to Dr. Abraham Nussbaum, a physician and a writer. We talk about his experience in AmeriCorps, reading, and knowing how he wanted to become a doctor.
Questions Covered:
- Why did you write your book and what is it about
- What books have had the most impact on your life?
- What made you change your mind and choose being a physician when you were with Americorps?
- What is slow medicine and how can we get back to it?
- How should we adopt the holistic model of medicine?
- What advice would you give to a medical student at the start of their career?
- What was your eureka moment when you knew you had to do medicine? Isn’t it a catch 22 that you have to know that you want to do nothing else but you have to go through the process to love it?
- How to cultivate love of writing?
- What is his “reading cure” (Reading books for 6 min per day)?
- Why did he choose psychiatry?
- How can we let physicians be physicians?
- Why do you get up in the morning?
- How to choose specialty when we have so much looming debt
In which Shree talks to Dr. Andrew Saxon, an addiction psychiatry specialist in the Veterans Administration Puget Sound Health Care System.
What is research, and how can it help you in your path to medical school? In this video, I try to explain all about research and how it can help you succeed in your goals when you are trying to go to medical school.
In this episode, Dr. Scott Halpern talks about health economics and nudges, a concept in health economics. He is the founding Director of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, which generates evidence to advance policies and practices that improve the lives of all people affected by serious illness. He is also the founding Director of the Fostering Improvement in End-of-Life Decision Science (FIELDS) program, the nation’s only program that applies behavioral economic principles to understand and improve upon the health decisions made by seriously ill patients, their caregivers, and their clinicians.
When medical school becomes competitive, people look at different ways to get into medical school. If you’re a high schooler, consider applying to BS/MD programs. In this video, I explain why it’s an alluring option supported by SCIENCE!
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Monica Kalra, a DO practicing out of Texas. We talked a lot about what a DO is, what the skills are for a good resident, and how she became a doctor.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Katelyn Bruno, a post-doctoral fellow at the Mayo Clinic, and we talked about myocarditis, her main research interest. We also talked about how to find a good mentor, her outreach work with the myocarditis foundation, and why she pursued a PhD.
A short conversation about what Common Sense Medicine is and what it is going to be in the future.
Thanks for tuning in!
In which Shree talks to Dr. MR Rajagopal, a palliative care doctor who has ironically made it his life’s mission to combat the stigma of palliative care in India. We talked about how to approach easing pain during the terminal months of life, and how to develop a conversation about opioids and medication to develop at a multidisciplinary effort to look at pain management.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Sumer Verma, a Boston-based psychiatrist who has had a long and storied career, filled with many golden nuggets of information. His knowledge, confidence, and poise really shaped my views on success and how to interpret my own misgivings.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Eduardo Bruera, a palliative care doctor who has ironically made it his life’s mission to talk about death, dying, and dignity. We talked about how to approach my own career with the patient first, and how to combat distress and dying with helping people be comfortable with their own mortality.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, a physician who is also a pastor who is interested in the intersection of burnout, coping, and spirituality, especially as it applies to residency education. He directs Yale School of Medicine’s Medicine-Pediatrics Residency while also finding time to pray and preach at various local congregations.
In which Shree talks to Suhas Gondi, a first year medical student at Harvard Medical School. He’s interned in the U.S. Government, Centers for Medicare and Medicard Services, and the Brookings Institution, and Shree asks him (read: picks his brain) on things that interest him about the U.S. Healthcare System.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman school of medicine and a board certified general internist at the Penn Presbyterian Medical center. They talk about Dr. Venkataramani’s research, the life course origins of health and socioeconomic inequality on adult health and well-being and the relationship between economic opportunities and health behavior, and also about making the best choices in life when involved in the medical world.
A prominent physician who is involved in his first year of fellowship, Dr. Siegler and Shree talked a lot about his life in the hospital, advances in his career, as well as physician’s habits and downplaying their own pain. Although only in his first year of fellowship, he has published more than 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and has spoken at several international neurology conferences, on subjects spanning the disciplines of stroke and medical education. His neurology background and interest in medical education inspired him to produce the BrainWaves neurology podcast, which has witnessed over 100,000 downloads since its 2016.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Saurabh Jha, an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who tweets @RogueRad. He’s very interested in how people enjoy social media, and why tweets should be informative and incisive rather than being politically correct. He initially trained in surgery at various hospitals in Britain and Australia and then moved to the US for a residency in diagnostic radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he also completed his fellowship in cardiovascular imaging. He talks to Shree about thinking critically in medicine beyond emotional platitudes. Question everything that you do, Dr. Jha advises, and try to synthesize the ideas with others who are as interested as you about the topics which affect the world.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Drew Helmer, the Director at the War Related Illness & Injury Study Center at the Veterans Administration New Jersey Health Care System. He is the author of Sex After Service: A Guide for Military Service Members, Veterans, and the People Who Love them. In this episode, I just wanted to ask him about how he gets so much done in a day and what future he thinks medicine is headed towards in the VA as well as in private practices across the US. Also, it was a great conversation about his journey into medicine and how the power of circumstances really shaped his career trajectories from a museum curator when he was very little, to a genetics researcher, and finally, a physician.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Frank Warsh, a Canadian Family Doctor who was in clinical practice until 2015 who now works as a coroner. The author of The Flame Broiled Doctor: from Boyhood to Burnout in Medicine, he has had 2 experiences with physician burnout, and has written extensively about not being able to do it all as a physician. Shree and Frank talk about the transition from their pre-medical and medical school years, realizing whether medical school is right for you, and prospects for the future if you realize medicine isn’t for you.
If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or just needs someone to talk to, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Cory Fawcett, a “repurposed surgeon” who writes financial advice for fellow physicians at his blog a Prescription for Financial Success (http://drcorysfawcett.com/) He has published multiple books in The Doctor’s Guide Series, writes a weekly blog, and also dabbles in his hobbies like real estate now that he has been debt free for many years.
In which Shree talks to Carrie Whitaker, a nurse specializing in medical surgical-oncology, acute care, and home health and pursuing an MPH at UC Berkeley. She is currently practicing in a home health agency as their Lead in the wound and ostomy nurse specialist in San Francisco, CA.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Jae Won Joh, a physician who is interested in answering questions of internet strangers, tinkering with code on www.medicaldork.com, searching for the best bowl of ramen, and keep his herb garden alive.
In which Shree talks to Dr. Irene Tien, an emergency medicine physician who offers virtual urgent care through RoweDocs group and blogs about health literacy at www.my-doctor-friend.com.
Do you want to know how to answer the big questions in the healthcare industry? Check in weekly with a college student on a mission to talk to healthcare professionals who have been answering these questions their entire lives. See what they have to say on Common Sense Medicine, a podcast which explores the future of healthcare. Launches March 9th!