What Brings You In Today?

This March, we are exploring the theme of mentorship. We are joined by two guest hosts, Deejay and Andrew, who are both first-year medical students and members of the Building Equitable Access to Mentorship (BEAM) program here at UWSMPH. We talk with Dr. Angela Byars-Winston, a tenured faculty member in the Division of Medicine and a leading researcher in advancing diversity goals and mentorship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. She walks us through the science of mentorship, the history of the BEAM program, and her own experiences with mentorship in her career. You can find the resources Dr. Byars-Winston discusses at cimerproject.org. 

In our second episode exploring the theme of inspiration, we chat with Stanford MD-PhD student Steven Truong. He shares with us his reflections on his father’s passing and the role that grief and relationships have in motivating him both personally and professionally.

We’re kicking off February by exploring the theme of inspiration. What inspires us to pursue careers in medicine? How do we keep going when things get tough? What hopes do we have for the future? In this episode, we chat with Dr. Jasmine Zapata, a pediatrician and public health doctor, about her journey in medicine and where she draws inspiration from. 

In this episode we continue our exploration of doing new things by chatting with Sue Yi, an 8th year MD/PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison who is completing her final year of medical school. Sue describes her experience starting Ohai nails, a hand painted, luxury custom press-on nails company she started in fall 2022. We talk about challenges that come with starting something new, how she overcame them, and what she looks forward to in the future. You can find Sue's designs at www.ohainails.com

In our first episodes of 2023, we are exploring the experience of doing new things. January is often a time of change, whether it’s the start of a new semester in school, the beginning of a new project, or new resolutions in general. We chat with Dr. Lisa Barroilhet, a gynecologist-oncologist and principal investigator of a research lab here at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She discusses the transitions she’s gone through in her career over the past few years and how she’s adapted.

This holiday season, we’ve been thinking a lot about our loved ones, and the ways that they support us in our journeys in medicine. So to look more closely at these relationships, members of the WBYIT team are interviewing family members about their experiences with our education and what it’s been like to be with us on this adventure. In this episode, Anqi talks with her sister Annie, and Mayra talks with her siblings Miguel and Gabriella.

This holiday season, we’ve been thinking a lot about our loved ones, and the ways that they support us in our journeys in medicine. So to look more closely at these relationships, members of the WBYIT team are interviewing family members about their experiences with our education and what it’s been like to be with us on this adventure. In this episode we feature Haley and Beth’s significant others, Carrington and Arjun.

We continue our three-part series on advocacy and civic engagement by talking with Wisconsin State Senator Kelda Roys about her views on and experiences with physician advocacy. She provides insight on why it is important for medical professionals to be involved in policy creation, examples of effective advocacy efforts, and advice on how to get involved at any stage of training. 

It’s election season, so let's talk about voting! In this episode, we talk with Sam Crowley, MPH, a second year medical student at University of Wisconsin SMPH and student leader of RxCivicHealth. We chat about why voting is so important for physicians and for patients. For more information on the resources discussed in this episode, follow the links below: VotER: https://vot-er.org/To register to vote: https://myvote.wi.gov/ 

In this episode, we continue our celebration of Spooky season by exploring the concept of fear in medicine with Allison Coffelt, an award winning author, poet, and teacher who focuses on narrative medicine. She shares with us her piece titled “Winter of Fear”, a poem published in JAMA in April 2021 about caring for patients during the height of the COVID pandemic and the inevitable feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, and fear that arose. We discuss how poetry offers a unique lens through which we can view and reflect upon the world around us and how it provides a platform to explore word choice intentionality and style variations to capture sentiment.