Specialty Stories | Medical School Headquarters | Premed | Medical Student

Dr. Erica Sneider is a community Colon and Rectal Surgeon who joins me today to discuss why she loves her specialty and traits that make a great surgeon!

Session 88 Dr. Gilbert is a Nephrology Program Director at Tufts Medical Center. Today, we discuss traits that make a good Nephrologist and how to be competitive. If you haven’t yet, please do check out all our other resources on the https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network) for more podcasts to help you along this journey towards becoming a physician. [01:42] Interest in Nephrology Gilbert initially thought he was going to be a primary care doctor. It wasn't until his Junior year of residency when he got interested in Nephrology. He saw how it bridged his interests in primary care as well as the intellectual stimulation of the intensive care unit, transplant, and more. [02:17] Types of Patients Nephrology patients typically have multi-system organ disease. For instance, patients with kidney disease oftentimes have endocrinology diseases like diabetes. They can also have rheumatology diseases like lupus or vasculitis. Many times, they have co-morbid cardiovascular disease or pulmonary

Session 87 Dr. Jairo Barrantes joins Ryan to talk about Academic Sleep Medicine including what he loves about it, what call looks like, and why he chose academia. For more resources, be sure to check out all our other podcasts on the https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network). [01:24] Interest in Sleep Medicine Jairo's interest in sleep medicine sparked during his pulmonary critical care fellowship, where their director was the head of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. That being said, a pulmonary physician has too little exposure to what sleep medicine really is including the different diseases you come across. Sleep medicine involves 80%-90% of sleep apnea. While the training you get as a pulmonologist is the sleep apnea part and not so much exposure to all other diseases that sleep medicine entails. This opened up different doors such as narcolepsy, parasomnia, and insomnia, which may up the main problems of sleep medicine today– but there are more others apparently, especially

Session 86 Dr. Joseph DeRose is an academic Cardiothoracic Surgeon. Today, he discusses the length of his training, the competitiveness of his field, and why he loves it! Meanwhile, please don’t miss all our other podcasts on the https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network) so you can get all the resources you need in every step of the way towards finally becoming a physician! [01:00] Interest in Cardiothoracic Surgery As a third-year medical student, Joseph liked almost everything. He even thought he was going into interventional cardiology. But he realized it's a medical specialty which means doing three years of medicine and three years of cardiology and then interventional cardiology. But he realized he liked surgery more than medicine. At that time there was no direct pathway to cardiac surgery. He went to general surgery training and found there were a lot of areas in surgery that he liked, but still much very interested in the heart. After doing multiple rotations, he decided to do

Session 85 Dr. Dave Winchester, a fellow Gator, joins me today to talk about why he chose academic Cardiology, how Cardiology is changing, and why he enjoys what he does! David has been out of training now for 8 years. He graduated from the University of Florida where he now works as an academic. Meanwhile, please do check out all of our other podcasts on https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network) so you get to have as many resources you need, as you journey along this path to one day becoming a physician! [01:15] Interest in Cardiology Dave's interest in cardiology started with medical school onwards. He enjoyed doing it more than other things. But he didn't really commit to it until halfway through his first year of internal medicine residency. He also loved the first rotation he did in Cardiology. And since then he knew it was something he wanted to do. Halfway through his first year of internal medicine residency, he loved his first cardiology clinical rotation. Compared to other si

Session 84 Dr. Edward Schloss joined me to talk about his journey to Cardiac Electrophysiology, what 17 years in the field looks like, and his likes and dislikes of his specialty. If you're a premed student, go check out all our other resources on https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network). If you're a medical student, go check out our newest https://medicalschoolhq.net/board-rounds-podcast/ (Board Rounds Podcast). [01:17] Interest in Cardiac Electrophysiology Coming out of undergrad as an engineer, Edward wasn't sure he wanted to be a doctor and only found out as he got further along. It was during second year of med school that he had an ECG class and they were already problem-solving instead of just plain memorization. He also got through different phases such as rheumatology, nephrology, and primary care. In fact, he recalls telling himself one evening that he wasn't going to be a cardiologist. He actually got interested in serial drug testing back in the old days, where they would

Session 83 Dr. Renee Rodriguez is a community-based Pediatric Cardiologist. She shares why she loves children’s hearts, a typical day, and whether she has balance in her life. Meanwhile, be sure to check out https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (MedEd Media Network) for more helpful resources. [01:25] Interest in Pediatric Cardiology The first time she realized she wanted to do pediatric cardiology was the second she started residency being her first rotation as a pediatric resident. For her, residency was the best thing that ever happened since she wasn't in school anymore. She did another rotation but it wasn't as fun as cardiology. From a physiology standpoint, Renee finds congenital heart disease super interesting. It's like a puzzle where you have to figure out where the blood flows based off of what the anatomy is. So she fell in love with congenital heart disease, to begin with. She also fell in love with the patients. For most kids with heart disease, they're neurologically intact. So Renee got

  Session 82 Dr. Brittany Henderson is a former academic Endocrinologist, just switching to private practice and today she discusses her specialty, what she loves, and more. Our goal for this podcast is to show you what is out there for you once you get through medical school. Too much focus is on the academic setting as you're going through medical school and the majority of medicine is practiced outside of an academic setting. However, medical students don't get that exposed that typically. Our goal here, therefore, is to compare and contrast different settings. If you’re still on your journey towards medical school, please also check out all our others podcast on the MedEd Media Network. Back to our episode today, Brittany is an endocrinologist who has been out of training now for five and a half years. She has mostly been in an academic setting but is now moving to a community setting, opening up her own private practice. [01:57] An Interest in Endocrinology and Finding a Mentor Brittany started get

  Session 81 Dr. Nicholas Volpe is the Chairman of Ophthalmology at the Feinberg School of Medicine. He joins us today to discuss his journey and his 25 years in the field! Today, we talk about the things necessary to match into this specialty and how to become successful in it. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts on MedEd Media Network. [01:44] His Interest in Ophthalmology During his second and third year rotations in medical school, Nicholas discovered his fascination with vision science. He liked procedures while recognizing that just being a surgeon that intervenes and disappears wasn't quite as satisfying as the kind of relationship that Ophthalmologists can have with their patients. So it was a unique blend of primary care of dealing with chronic patients with everyday needs and then superimposed on that is the chance to intervene surgically. [03:00] Traits that Lead to Being a Good Neuro-Ophthalmologist Nicholas describes this as a somewhat eccentric subspecialty within Ophthalmology as

Session 80 Dr. Mary McHugh is a urologist who's been out in practice for a year and a half. She talks about her journey to urology, especially as a female, in a very male-dominated specialty. Also, be sure to check out all our other podcasts on MedEd Media Network to help you along this journey towards finally becoming a full-fledged physician! [01:21] Interest in Urology Mary was exposed early on to urology when she was a second-year student during a six-week general urinary block that covered OB/Gyn and Urology. She saw how urologists were fairly entertaining who showed videos of the robot. From that moment on, she got introduced to the concept of the specialty that she had never even considered or known much about. But this sparked her interest in learning more about surgical fields. "I just never thought about urology - period... I had always thought women didn't become surgeons." She always thought she'd do something that wasn't procedure-based or medicine-based. That said, she didn't really experien

Session 79 Dr. Brittany Davidson is an academic OB/GYN Oncologist practicing at Duke Health. She joined us to share the specialty she chose and why it’s great. Please help up find more guests for this podcast by sending an email to team@medicalschoolhq.net and write the subject: Specialty Stories Intern. [01:40] Interest in Oncology Brittany has always been interested in women's health even back in college. She then followed the path to medical school, realizing she loved being in the operating room as well as the people and the OB/GYNs she worked with. She saw how they were happy at work - something she wanted to be like. After her third year rotation as a medical student, she was pretty cemented to OB-Gyn and didn't realize she was going to do Oncology until 2nd-year residency. Going into OB-Gyn she was thinking it was all about delivering babies and bringing joy to the world. In fact, she remembers telling her medical school tour guide that she didn't want to do Oncology. However, after first rotation a

Session 78 Dr. Alex Voldman is an osteopathic (DO) physician who specializes in Ophthalmology as a cornea and cataract surgeon. Check out our latest episode to learn more. Also, check out all our other podcasts on MedEd Media Network. Please help us find a guest here on the podcast. Send me an email at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. [01:35] Interest in Ophthalmology Alex didn't go to medical school thinking about such Ophthalmology Upon his path to being an orthopedic surgeon, presenting at a conference, he met an Ophthalmologist who encouraged him to spend a day at his clinic. Seeing their practice, he thought they're some of the happiest doctors he has ever seen in the years he spent as a student. He thought it was an organized environment where doctors and patients were happy. And he thought they were happy. Wanting to be happy as well, he decided to jump to the bandwagon. He also found them to be working at reasonable hours. They also got surgery and played with cool toys and lasers. When he found it was com

Session 77 Dr. Janani Krishnaswami talks about Academic Preventive Medicine including what drew her to it, and what she likes and doesn't like about prev med. Janani is a preventive medicine physician in University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. To learn more about preventive medicine, check out all the available resources at the American College of Preventive Medicine. Also, be sure to take a listen to all our other podcasts on MedEd Media Network. [01:22] Her Interest in Preventive Medicine Janani says a lot of preventive medicine physicians basically end up stumbling into the specialty. Relatively a nontrad student, she had a background in investment banking and her background was in economics, public health, public policy, and international studies. And she has always been interested in the systems level aspect of medicine. When she started doing her third year clerkship, she saw the same patterns of patients coming into the clinic with conditions that didn't seem to be cured as well as who got the illne

Session 76 This week, we're joined by Allison who has previously shared her story of burnout. We discuss burnout as well as the birth of MedDiaries - our newest project to help with this. This episode is actually taken from The Premed Years Podcast since we're announcing this new project that will greatly impact premed students, medical students, residents, and physicians! [03:35] The Prevalence of Burnout in the Physician Community Allison talks about there are bad days as much as there are good days, which is highly prevalent in the physician community. In fact, 42% of physicians in the 2018 Medscape Report are burned out. Based on personal experience, Allison is passionate when it comes to this topic. She also works in the field of Neurology which ranks second on the list of fields that are most likely to experience burnout, second to Critical Care. More and more people are now researching burnout due to its prevalence in the community of physicians, residents, and medical students. Allison describes

Session 75 Dr. Kelsey Hopkins works in rural private practice in Southern Illinois. Learn more about rural family medicine, what he likes about it and what he doesn't like, the unique environment, how to connect with other physicians, and so much more! If you have any suggestions for new guests to have on the podcast, just shoot me an email at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. [02:00] An Interest in Family Medicine He actually realized he wanted to be a family medicine physician before he got accepted to medical school. Growing up in a small town in Illinois, he is the fourth of eight kids. Everybody was born at home after the first two. So there was no one in his family that was in medicine. Naive to the healthcare field in general, he didn't know there were different specialties so he just thought that as long as you went to the doctor, they give everything. Then he found out there was a rural medicine program, the RMED program at the University of Illinois - College of Medicine in Rockford. He explored this and

Session 74 Dr. Ross Hauser is residency trained in physiatry and has gone on to train in prolotherapy. He talks about what it is and why it's the future! Ross is very passionate about prolotherapy. If you want to learn more about this, visit his website on Caring Medical. Also, check out all the rest of our episodes on MedEd Media Network, including https://medicalschoolhq.net/thepremedyears/ (The Premed Years Podcast), The MCAT Podcast, https://medicalschoolhq.net/oldpremeds-podcast/ (The OldPreMeds Podcast), Ask Dr. Gray: Premed Q&A, and some more coming in the future! [02:05] Interest in Prolotherapy In the last two months of his residency, Ross had an elective rotation which he did with prolotherapist Dr. Hamwell back in 1992. Then he joined the physician in 1993, so he has been a prolotherapist for over 25 years. Ross describes himself as always liking old people. Thinking he was going to be a geriatrician initially, it was during his chronic pain rotation in his physiatry residency that he discovere

Session 73 Dr. Scott Harper is has been out of training for 8 years. He joined us to talk about his specialty, Geriatrics, and what he loves about it and more. Scott is in an academic medical center at Wake Forest Medical School. He shares with us his journey to Geriatric Medicine, what it takes to get there, things he likes the most and least, and more! And if you haven’t yet, please take a listen to all our other podcasts on MedEd Media! [01:24] Interest in Geriatric Medicine Scott traces his interest in the speciality back to when he was medical school, going through the clinic rotations. When he was working with patients he found he was most drawn to the extremes of age. He envisions his practice to include babies and kids to adults and people nearing the end of their life. When he was in family medicine for residency, he had an almost exclusively geriatric population in his clinic practice. He didn't feel he had the skillset to take care of all of their needs so this became his goal going into Geriat

Session 72 Dr. Leslie Pineda is a private practice Neonatologist in Orlando. We talk about her inspiration to go to the NICU and what she likes, dislikes, and more. I am constantly looking for physicians who would make great guests here on the show. If you know someone who might make great guests here, send them my way at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. [01:33] An Interest in Neonatology Leslie's mom is a NICU nurse who have been doing it for over 30 years. So she was basically exposed to the field at an early age. She would go visit her at work and back when the babies were still in a nursery, she'd get to see her mom and get the babies through the windows. Through the years, she always knew she wanted to do pediatrics. "I would branch off and think of different things but I always kept falling back to neonatology." As to why not a NICU nurse like her mom, Leslie explains she wanted to make the "big decisions." The bedside was fun but she wanted to pursue further and get to lead the team and make the decisions

Session 71 Dr. Serena Sah is an academic Pediatric Cardiologist in the California area. We talk about what drew her to the specialty, what she likes about it, and more. Serena has been out of training now for three years. By the way, do you know of someone whom you think would make a great guest on this show? Email me at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. [01:25] Her Interest in Pediatric Cardiology Serena enjoys working with kids so she knew she wanted to do Pediatrics. She had a six-month-old cardiac patient that had an interesting physiology. Knowing nothing about cardiac disease, she was freaking out and that encounter with the patient was what really got her intrigued by the physiology of the heart. Additionally, pathophysiology made sense to her. She likes being able to figure out the causes of the disease. Going through medical school, she initially didn't have that interest in Cardiology as much as when she encountered that experience. She thought she would do general pediatrics at first but she already had

Session 70 Dr. Daniel Clearfield is a Family Medicine trained physician who specializes in Sports Medicine. Listen to how he got into the field and what he loves about it. First off, The Premed Playbook: Guide to the MCAT is now available on Amazon, Kindle, and Paperback. Just a reminder, you don't have to have a Kindle device to read a Kindle eBook. You can use a Kindle app on every device you have. It's $4.99 for the Kindle at this point and $9.99 for Paperback. Please help us find guests for this show. If you have physician friends, family, and people you work with whom you think would be a good guest here on Specialty Stories, where we also haven't covered their specific specialty and setting, shoot me an email at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. Listen to The Premed Years Podcast Session 273, especially if you still have some questions about osteopathic medicine. Dr. Daniel Clearfield is a family sports medicine physician who's been out of training now for seven years. He used to be in Academics nut now is