ZDoggMD: Medical Standup Comedy

Get your ER comedy fix.

This is ZDoggMD's standup medical comedy from the Mel Herbert’s Essentials of Emergency Medicine 2011. Lame and offensive…well, you really haven’t seen nothin’ yet.

You'll want to notice how ZDoggMD riffs on his students... Now that's just not nice.

Part 1

Part 2

Rethinking What's Possible As A New Doctor

Thoughts after Medical Fusion Conference

Next time you find yourself in The Maldive Islands with no plans and some spare cash, book a room at The Conrad Maldive Rangali Island Resort. In addition to the group of overwater bungalows, with a coral reef for a front porch, they will turn the underwater dinning room into a hotel suite, for the right price. The idea for a hotel room positioned 20 feet underwater amidst a vibrant coral reef teeming with fish is a concept anyone could dream up. However, taking that dream and turning it into a reality is a whole different story. When you learn about someone who made a big dream come to fruition, it forces a rethink. You begin to question all the assumptions held about “what’s possible” and this also leaves you open to new and bigger possibilities.

The 2011 Medical Fusion Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada has just finished and the weekend was packed with speakers who have spent their careers rethinking and redefining “possible” in medicine. I was fortunate to have the weekend open and was able to attend, because my current rotation is outpatient pediatrics. But this silver lining had a grey cloud. Though the first lecture was scheduled to begin at 8:00 am on friday morning, for me, the day began at four hunched over the toilet revisiting the previous night’s dinner. I guess I had one too many kids sneezing in my face that week and my normally stellar immune system was no match for those walking petri dishes. After two more episodes of reverse peristalsis I was less than enthusiastic about spending all day listening to lectures.

My apathy melted away almost instantly as the first speaker, Dr. Barry Silbaugh got up and shared his experiences working as the CEO of The American College of Physician Executives, his international medical work, and his thoughts on how to pursue a non-traditional career in medicine. As the morning went on I found my excitement building as one after another the speakers continued to shatter the assumptions I held about what is possible as a medical professional. By the time Dr. Greg Bledsoe finished his presentation on living and working abroad I was glowing with enthusiasm, though it could have just been my fever, but either way I had just been presented with a new paradigm and was ready for more.

As the conference continued, my immune system finally resumed control of my gastrointestinal system, and I was repeatedly amazed at the innovative and creative individuals sharing the trials and successes of practicing medicine on their own terms. My favorite part of the conference was the accelerator sessions at the end of each day. These sessions provided a chance to connect with the speakers on a more personal level. As a medical student this provided me with a rare opportunity to sit down with great doctors and pick their brain for advice. I was honored by the way they engaged my questions, offered sound advice, and challenged me to continue to think outside the box in my own career.

The experience I had at Medical Fusion was one I believe will become a defining point in my professional career. It is for that reason I have decided share what I learned and work to build a community where medical students can rethink what’s possible in medicine. Now that I have met so many talented physicians who are engaging medicine in a way that excites them, I know I want to do the same. The weekend helped me to rethink the kind of doctor I aspire to become. I hope this site will do the same for you and who knows may be some day we’ll be seeing patients at a hospital clinic 20 feet under the sea.

Options: The Light At The End Of The Medical School Tunnel

Knowing what's possible after medschool makes all the difference.

Thoughts are swirling around my head at a centrifugal pace that would dizzy even Oksana Baiul. So many new ideas and options to consider. Options, that’s what I’m excited by the most. I now feel I have the ability to plot my own course through this perilous and stormy sea of arduous and often aggravating academic acrobatics known to the lay person as “medical school.” That ability is priceless to me.

I am someone that will happily wade through any amount of crap, provided : 1) I have some degree of control over what particular flavor of crap it is and 2) That I see some higher purpose to the wading… the proverbial “light at the end of the crap”. Med School isn’t crap per se, but if we’re being honest with one another… it seems suspiciously similar to it at times. This is especially true when the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be flickering and desirable options seem scarce.

That flickering light strengthened a little when I ran across the freelance MD website. I had been scouring the internet looking for ideas on innovative and interesting outlets for someone with an MD degree. In short I was looking for options. It’s not that I absolutely abhor the thought of a traditional clinical practice, but I wasn’t all too excited by it either. What gets ME pumped is the the world of ideas, possibilities, and innovations. How can I improve the process? Are there better ways of being an MD?

These are the questions for which I was seeking answers. There were scattered accounts of doctors working on their own terms; perhaps on as an expedition doc to the jungles of Africa, or making a career of disaster relief consultancy, or gallivanting off to Alaska for 6 months as a locum tienens doctor. These ideas excited me, but I had no mentors to council me on how to steer myself toward this type of career or whether it was possible at all. If I told someone about these ideas, I often got a “Yeah, go for it man (eye roll)” or “Don’t mind Jeremy, he’s a little crazy” response.

Then one friday afternoon after slogging through some scintillating biochem, I stumbled in through the front door of freelanceMD.com. Five hours of reading later, I realized that this was the group of people I had been looking for. People that are innovating and LEADING in their non-traditional medical fields. Wilderness medicine, International Medicine, Concierge Medicine, Disaster relief and humanitarian medicine, Medical Entrepreneurship, Internet Medicine, Medical Writing, and on and on. The possibilities astound. It didn’t take me long to realize that medical students need access to minds like these.

My internet search had taken me to a thousand different sites with a juicy tidbit here or there, but I was always left wanting more. I hadn’t found the consolidated source of information on non-traditional medical routes I was looking for until I ran across Freelance MD. And so… we’ve decided that medical students need exposure to these ideas, they need options. They need mentoring from inquisitive and innovative minds in medicine. They need to network and dialogue with like-minded students DURING medical school and they need to see the light at the end of the crap and put themselves in a position to effect change in the medical status quo. Hopefully this site can do that for you. Here, we’re about doing things a little differently. If any of this resonates, then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome.