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

The Heart Wants What It Wants.

In this Valentine’s Day episode, four medical students sit down to play the ultimate compatibility game—answering questions their partners answered about them ahead of time. From whether they’re optimists or realists about med school (some hedging here), to what their dens would look like as animals (things got weird), these spouses and significant others prove they actually know their medical students pretty well. Mostly. There’s a Punsesee…Puncsa…Punxsutawney Phil appearance, some passionate love for hobby farms, and one unfortunate name mix-up to kick off the whole episode.

Whether you’re a pre-med wondering how people maintain relationships during the madness of medical school, or you just want to hear some genuinely funny banter about med school couples, M1 Anna Royer and M2s Samantha Gardner, Sarah Upton, and Alexis Baker (and spouses Nathan, Nick, Kyle, and Caleb–er, Cade) are here for you. You’ll hear how these medical students actually talk to their partners about school (spoiler: sometimes too much about bones), what they’d do with more time in their day, and why you should never ask a them to draw your portrait. It’s proof that love can absolutely survive medical education.

Episode credits:

Producer: Dave Etler

Co-hosts: Samantha Gardner, Sarah Upton, Anna Royer, Alexis Baker

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.

Slather some beef tallow on it.

On this episode, M3 Fallon Jung, M1s Isa Perez-Sandi and Cory Karasek, and M2 Maria Schapfel let loose on the internet’s wildest health content. We react to AI-generated videos claiming cortisol is why Dave smells bad, Colonel Sanders warning you about non-biodegradable supermarket fruit, and those unhinged animations where a screaming spine demands you fix your posture. Some of it’s nonsense, some of it’s accurate, and all of it leads to tangents about fake vomit made from chunky soup, whether the ER triage nurse should tell non-emergent patients “good news, you’re not dying,” and the eternal question every clinical student faces: “So what specialty are you going into?”

We talk about imposter syndrome, being “pluripotent,” the secret ER life hack nobody tells you about, and why Jeff Goldblum’s face should be used in all AI-generated health content. It’s an hour of medical students trying to make sense of what social media is feeding their future patients—and themselves.

Episode credits:

Producer: Dave Etler

Co-hosts: Fallon Jung, Alexis Baker, Cory Karasek, Maria Schapfel

Clips: alimentaryschool (Instagram), lifehacks (Facebook), nursestankk (Facebook), superzenlabs (, fullhealthmode (Instagram), meow._.22_1 (Instagram), doctor.binh (Instagram)

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.

Don’t give up the outside activities that’ll make you a better doc

As Dave has observed many times, medicine will take everything you have, if you allow it to. What this means is that you have to carve out time for your own interests, whether you’re a physician or a medical student. These are the things that not only keep you sane–an outlet for all the intensity that the study and practice of medicine has to offer–but they can even make you better at surgery or how positively your patients view you.

M1s Ben Cooper, Reese Rosenmeyer, Arielle Weber, and Reed Adajaar talk about their hobbies, what they get out of them as hard-working medical students, where they prioritize them in their lives, and why it’s sometimes even easier to enjoy them in med school than it was as undergrads. Dave offers some findings on how having outside interests makes doctors great. And the crew answers a question from Nicole, a mother of three little ones and military wife who, at the ripe old age of 35, is contemplating how she can pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor.

If you have a question we can discuss on the show, send it in at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus!

Episode credits:

Producer: Anna Royer

Co-hosts: Ben Cooper, Reed Adajaar, Reese Rosenmeyer, Arielle Weber

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.

[Content warning: Dave did his best to remove sniffles.]

Spicy chicken nuggets, bad decisions, and what happens when medical students test their heat tolerance on mic

What happens when medical students, extremely spicy chicken nuggets, and microphones collide? Regret.

M1s Reed Adajaar, Trever Maiers, Ben Cooper, and Matt Taylor assigned themselves a Hot Ones–style challenge featuring progressively hotter sauces on chicken nuggets. Confidence is high at the start. That does not last.

As the Scoville units climb, so do the sweating, the panic, and the chaos at the table. Milk appears. Milk fails. Conversation continues anyway—exploring their goals for a new semester, their knowledge of anatomy, and how their past experiences are serving them as they go through med school. Things start off mostly coherent, move towards entertaining attempts at coherence, and finally devolving into incoherence as the magnitude of their error in suggesting this episode becomes truly apparent.

This episode is light on medicine, heavy on heat, and fully committed to the bit. If you’ve ever said “How bad could it be?”—this episode has an answer.

Episode credits:

Producer: Trever Maiers

Co-hosts: Ben Cooper, Matt Taylor, Reed Adajaar

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.

What to expect for med students moving from classroom to exam room

The beginning of clerkships mark a medical student’s progress from theoretical learning to practical application of what they’ve been taught. This past week, our M2s received a 4-day long orientation to clerkships (we call it “transitions week”), and M2s Samantha Gardner and Alexis Baker were joined by M3s Fallon Jung and Zach Case to talk about this important milestone. What are clerkships like? How will students know what to actually do? Who will they be working with? What are residents and attendings looking for when they evaluate a clerkship student? How should they react when a patient says something out-of-pocket?

There’s so much to be learned in clerkships…including that they really are prepared to enter the real world, even if they don’t yet feel it!

Episode credits:

Producer: Fallon Jung

Co-hosts: Zach Case, Samantha Gardner, Alexis Backer

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.