What Brings You In Today?

We begin Season 2 by talking with the people at the beginning of their medical school journeys: the new M1s at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The first year of medical school brings excitement, pride, uncertainty, hope, and fear as students explore who they want to be in and outside of medicine. In this episode, you’ll hear from M1s about their first few weeks of school and from several M2s, M3s, and M4s as well as the PedsAdmit team offering advice and best wishes to the Class of 2025. Find the PedsAdmit podcast wherever you get your podcasts or @pedsadmit on instagram!

To a lot of medical students, the thought of taking an improv class might seem initially terrifying, then intriguing, and then terrifying again. Our guest in this episode, Dr. Amy Zelenski, Assistant Professor within the Department of Internal Medicine at UWSMPH, designed and teaches an elective entitled “Improvisational Theater for Health Professionals” as part of her work developing medical education curricula focused on empathy and storytelling. With a background in acting, Dr. Zelenski combines her love of theater with her research interest in medical education to show health professionals the value and practice of improvisation. Life and medicine are unscripted, and improv helps healthcare students develop their listening skills, hone their empathy, embrace spontaneity, and of course, laugh. For all UWSMPH students, check out the link below for more information about how and when to sign up for Dr. Zelenski’s improv course! https://www.medicine.wisc.edu/general-internal-medicine/amy-zelenski-medical-education-research-empathy-and-improvisationP.S. We may or may not have engaged in an impromptu improv session in this episode— listen to find out! 

From physician comedians like Ken Jeong and Adam Kay to sitcoms like Scrubs, there’s a long tradition of overlap between the worlds of comedy and medicine.  While medical students and professionals take seriously the gravity of caring for patients, comedy writing allows us to capture the fun, goofy, and humorous sides of medicine as parts of the wide array of emotions and experiences that come with this career. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Fredrick Martyn, a current family medicine resident at Western University in Ontario, Canada and a comedy writer whose work has been published on several humor writing platforms including Points in Case and Gomerblog.  Dr. Martyn shares with us why he loves finding the humor life and starts off this episode by reading his recently published piece “An Email to the Dean from Jesus Christ, Medical Student.” Find Dr. Martyn's work on his website fredrickmartyn.weebly.com!

This episode contains content related to mental health and depression.National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-273-8255While medical students experience high levels of burnout, anxiety, and depression, they are less likely to seek help than their age-matched peers. In this episode,  Anqi Gao talks with Lia Warbasse, a psychologist within Mental Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who primarily works with PA, PT, and medical students. Throughout her time working with healthcare students, Dr. Warbasse has noticed common challenges medical students face and delves deep into some of the internal and external factors that contribute to both mental illness and a lack of mental healthcare in this population. She also shares her thoughts on the importance of completing the stress cycle and provides different resources students to access. 

This episode contains content related to mental health and depression.National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-273-82551 in 4 medical students around the world reports depressive symptoms or depression at some point during medical school. Despite high rates of mental illness amongst medical trainees, students face barriers to care including stigma and lack of access. In her piece “The Gift of Time,” Dr. Priya Roy, an internal medicine resident at the University of Wisconsin, shares her experience seeking mental healthcare in medical school after the death of a loved one. Dr. Roy discusses how her frustrations navigating her school’s mental health services evolved into BereaveMed, a website she co-founded and created to help other medical trainees find resources to deal with grief and loss. You can find the piece Dr. Roy reads in this episode on her website, www.bereavemed.com.

From anatomical drawings to narrative medicine, there’s a long tradition of overlap between medicine and the visual arts—a tradition that Dr. Shirlene Obuobi, an Internal Medicine Resident at the University of Chicago and creator of Shirlywhirlmd, embodies. Dr. Obuobi is both a physician and a graphic artist who uses her love for drawing, comics, and writing to convey her experiences in medicine. Dr. Obuobi shares her comics on her widely popular social media accounts and website (links below), and uses her platform not only for self-expression but to contribute to important conversations on issues within the medical field, namely racism in medicine. Everyone likes to talk about the art of medicine, but in this episode, we had an absolutely amazing time talking with Dr. Obuobi about the roles for art in medicine. Check out Dr. Obuobi’s work discussed in this episode on @shirlywhirlmd on Twitter and Instagram and https://shirlywhirlmd.com. 

From studying powerpoint slides to UWorld questions, healthcare training doesn’t always leave room for creativity—and students notice. In parts 1 and 2 of our series on creativity in medicine, we’ve seen that creativity means something different to everyone, and our individual creativity is by definition unique and personal. For part 3, we wanted to hear how healthcare students specifically stay creative in this field, so we asked our classmates and friends to submit recordings telling or showing us why creativity is important to them. This episode features Andrea Rossman (MS2, Medical College of Wisconsin), Jake Khoussine (MS3, UWSMPH), Claire Beamish (MS3, UWSMPH), Meaghan Kenfield (MS3, UWSMPH), Jonathan Alicea (MS3, University of Puerto Rico), Rashea Minor (VM3, UWSMPH), Quynh Nguyen, (MS1, UWSMPH), Christie Cheng (MS3, UWSMPH), Rufus Sweeney (MS3, UWSMPH), and Nithin Charlly (MS3, UWSMPH) on creativity in healthcare education. Check out our instagram page at @wbyit_uwsmph to see some of the creative works discussed in this episode. 

There’s a term in positive psychology called the “flow state” that describes the unique, entrancing feeling of total captivation and absorption in a project or activity. Whether it’s from watching a new movie, writing, painting, or scientific research, in the flow state, we feel energized yet relaxed, hyperfocused yet enjoying every moment, so fully immersed that all sense of time is lost. The day to day realities of medical training often feel incompatible with flow state, but for Dr. Joshua Mezrich, UWSMPH Transplant Surgeon and author of “When Death Becomes Life,” creative endeavors both within and outside of medicine help him find his flow. In part 2 of our series on creativity in medicine, Dr Mezrich shares the many ways he has incorporated creativity into his academic and personal life—including writing a book, running a transplant surgery research lab, creating the MezLight, hosting “The Sett” podcast, performing OR stand-up comedy, AND MORE. Check out Dr. Mezrich’s book and podcast by visiting the links below. The Sett: https://www.surgery.wisc.edu/podcast/"When Death Becomes Life:" https://www.harpercollins.com/products/when-death-becomes-life-joshua-d-mezrich?variant=32207987998754

In medical school school, we get really good at knowing the facts—at answering questions on rounds and picking A instead of B, C, or D. The parts of our brains that love learning new things flourish in med school, but other parts, the parts that are creative and abstract, seem to get pushed to the side. Creativity isn’t generally emphasized in medical training, but the more time we spend in this field, the more apparent it becomes that creativity is essential for dealing with the complex, scientific and human challenges of medicine. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Anne Jacobson, a family medicine physician and UWSMPH alumnus, whose piece published in JAMA, “The Highest Bidder,” inspired our four part series on creativity in medicine and medical training. 

Memes may seem like all fun and games, but, like other forms of narrative medicine, medical memes discuss important themes and problems medical students face, revealing the medical student experience in a fun and palatable form. In this episode, we talk with medical anthropologist and psychiatry resident at Duke University, Dr. Yekki Song, who studies the meaning and common threads behind medical memes on Reddit.