What does medicine look like when the next generation refuses to be broken by it?

In this episode of Social Rounds, we’re joined by Shay Taylor Allen, a fourth-year medical student at Howard University, class vice president, and future anesthesiologist—whose journey took her from working as a hospital janitor to interviewing for residency in the same system she once cleaned.

Together, we talk about the growing generational divide in medical training:

Why younger doctors are pushing back on brutal hours,

Why “that’s how we did it” isn’t a solution,

And how mental health, mentorship, and purpose are reshaping what it means to become a physician.

Shay shares her perspective on Gen Z and nontraditional medical students, the reality of burnout culture, and why healthier doctors make safer patients. We also dig into communication breakdowns between trainees and attendings, whether medicine mistakes resilience for suffering, and what real change could look like inside a system that resists it.

This conversation is about more than medicine—it’s about who gets to belong, who gets heard, and how one person’s story can expose what’s broken in an entire profession.

Hosted by:

Tony Chin-Quee: @wheyouat

Frances Mei Hardin: @francesmeimd

Guest: Shay Taylor Allen

Connect with Shay: @shayy.taylor

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective

This week on Social Rounds, Tony Chin-Quee is joined by fan-favorite guest host Joan Chan, MD for a wide-ranging, wildly unfiltered episode that somehow connects vaccines, cocaine-addicted founding surgeons, and prestige gay hockey television.

First up: a much-needed PSA on flu shots, herd immunity, and why “you can still get sick” is not the dunk anti-vaxxers think it is. From there, Tony dives into one of medicine’s most unhinged origin stories — how William Halsted’s cocaine addiction helped shape modern residency training — sparking a serious (and hilarious) debate about whether doctors should experience more of what patients actually go through.

Then, Joan takes us deep into the cultural phenomenon of Heated Rivalry: why gay hockey romance has taken over the internet, why the sex scenes actually matter, and why sometimes what burned-out clinicians really need is a well-written, deeply horny escape with a guaranteed happy ending.

Come for the public health facts. Stay for the medical ethics, pop culture analysis, and elite-level yapping.

Hosted by:

Tony Chin-Quee: @wheyouat

Joan Chan, MD: @joanchanmd

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective

In this episode of Social Rounds, Frances Mei and Tony Chin-Quee do what they do best: give unsolicited, deeply opinionated advice on medicine, relationships, and modern life.

They start with a deceptively simple question — what’s on your feet? — and unpack how bad shoes, bad posture, and worse training habits quietly wreck physicians’ bodies over time. From Dansko regrets to sneaker conversions, this is the advice no one gives you early enough.

Then things escalate.

The duo breaks down internet relationship dilemmas involving:

1. “Work wives” and why emotional intimacy absolutely counts
2. Sleeping in another woman’s hoodie (hard no)
3. Wedding photo body-shaming disguised as “aesthetics”
4. Grown men missing real-life commitments for MMO leadership roles

Along the way, they talk emotional cheating, boundaries, aging out of bad systems, and the difference between being technically allowed to do something and it actually being okay.

As always, no medical advice — just honesty, humor, and the perspective of two former surgeons who’ve seen enough to call it like it is.

Hosted by:

Tony Chin-Quee: @wheyouat

Frances Mei Hardin: @francesmeimd

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective