Welcome to Generations: A Middle Distance podcast. Yep, that's the new name for The Middle of Medicine. We felt that, being a father/daughter duo, Generations was more accurate in conveying what we will be talking about going forward. This week, it was survival. More specifically, those little hobbies and pastimes that help us make it through the grime, muck, and suck that is real life.

The speed of light. It's one of those things that we just sort of take for granted. It's as fast as things get. But what if it wasn't? What if something could go faster than the speed of light? That would be a big deal. Like, world changing big deal. Well, maybe something can, and that something is information. Aubrey takes us through the Nobel Prize for physics this year and we talk about just how big of a deal it is.

This week is all about change. We discuss some upcoming changes to the podcast schedule, and more importantly changes to the direction and future of the pod. These changes reflect changes in the lives of some of us, and we discuss why those changes are happening.

It's been a couple of months and it's time for us to get back into the swing of things. This week Aubrey and I catch up on life, and then talk about some of the red flags we have seen. Whether it is something in someone's chart, or comments they have made to us, we talk about comments that make us just a little more cautious when it comes to health care.

This week we discuss a few science and medicine related thoughts from the past few weeks. We geek out about the first images from the JWST, discuss a first for Aubrey, and rant about just how ridiculously out of touch hospital administration is. I'll give you a hint, the answer is very. Oh, and a little adventure in surgery to wrap up this topic grab bag.

Medicine can overwhelm. It isn't really something we can let go. It doesn't stop when you walk out of the hospital or the clinic. So this week we introduce Interludes. Going forward, we will have an interlude episode when we feel that we want to talk about something else. And this week, we wanted to talk about Dr. Strange In the Multiverse of Madness. Since it is our podcast, we decided to just go for it.

Medicine continues to make huge leaps forward. We can treat and cure things these days that would have been deadly not that many years ago. With that advancement comes expectations. And sometimes those expectations are difficult or impossible to meet. Aubrey and I discuss our experience dealing with those expectations and when we can't meet them.

Education is a lifelong pursuit. In medicine, there are some very particular ways in which we learn and are taught. The fiction of medicine in TV and movies often really makes a mess of medical education. We discuss our experiences teaching and being taught, including the art of not knowing an answer.

We've been talking about burnout. We talked about how all the currently offered solutions are pretty bad, because they rely on the individual addressing it. And burnout is a systematic problem.

But that doesn't mean that self-care is worthless. Quite the opposite. It is essential, but to combat burnout, but also just in general. We all need to take care of ourselves. Aubrey and I talk about some of the methods we apply to try to take care of ourselves.

Two weeks ago, we discussed many of the causes of healthcare worker burnout. This week we discuss some of the solutions offered, and weigh in on their chances of success. I'll give you a hint, they have very little chance of succeeding.

We all experience burnout. But burnout in healthcare is something that is only getting worse and worse. Aubrey wrote a paper about it and we felt it was so important to discuss that we needed to talk about it. We planned on talking about the problems and solutions in a single episode. But it was far too long for that. Here is part #1, discussing the problems and causes of burnout in healthcare.

Tribes seem to be part of humanity. We seek them, we make them, we cling to them. But what happens when tribalism gets in the way of doing good? We discuss our experiences with tribalism in medicine.

This week we have a quick rundown of some of the more unusual and interesting things we have seen in medicine.

We didn’t get an episode posted last week, despite having one recorded at the end of the week. Here is a brief update, and we will be back with our regular posts next week!