Creation of a Podcast by the AMA Medical Student Advocacy Committee

Adam Bubelenyi, Kaiden Jobin and Sana Samadi

🎧 Intro episode is out now — check it out here: https://youtu.be/xOtYnm2gpBY

📺 Subscribe to the channel for future episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe7OwIv8PNRNNSpvX8XdVNg

The AMA Medical Student Advocacy Committee is a student-led initiative dedicated to promoting advocacy efforts and spotlighting advocacy-worthy causes across Alberta’s medical student population. To date, our work has primarily taken shape through social media (Instagram) and article publications on our website. These posts highlight pressing issues in medicine from a student lens, outline areas that may benefit from further advocacy, and share existing efforts while offering ways for peers to get involved. We believe this type of engagement is essential in raising awareness and fostering a culture of positive change among trainees—one that will persist into future clinical practice.

However, as impactful as these efforts have been, we’ve encountered a challenge that limits reach: time. Many students—and even physicians—don’t always have the bandwidth to read through full articles or scroll through lengthy posts on social media. Recognizing this gap and inspired by successful models from both the University of Alberta and University of Calgary medical schools, we decided to expand our platform by launching a podcast.

This podcast is a collaboration led by Kaiden Jobin, Adam Bubelenyi, Abdullahi Mohammed, Sana Samadi and — medical students from the University of Calgary and Alberta. Sana Samadi and Abdullahi Mohammed will serve as the primary hosts, also contributing to the editing and development of episode scripts. Kaiden Jobin and Adam Bubelenyi will assist in writing and preparing scripts for the podcast with occasional hosting. This effort highlights an important spirit of inter-university collaboration and reflects the diverse perspectives within Alberta’s medical student community.

Episodes will feature topics that mirror the themes explored in our past articles and social media posts, such as the primary care crisis, accessibility in medicine, rural and Indigenous health, social accountability in admissions, and structural inequities in medical training. But we won’t stop there. The podcast will also create space for new conversations that go beyond written formats, bringing in guest speakers, experts, policymakers, and physicians to add nuance and broaden perspectives.

Crucially, this format allows listeners to hear voices they might not otherwise encounter—those of students sharing their lived experiences, preceptors unpacking the historical roots of today’s issues, and leaders offering insight into how change is made at policy and system levels. This kind of dialogue is often lost in written media but is essential for humanizing healthcare challenges and creating meaningful engagement.

We are medical students entering the profession during a pivotal moment in Alberta’s healthcare landscape. As we witness shifts in team-based care, physician workforce planning, and evolving patient needs, we also recognize that early-stage trainees can sometimes feel distanced from the ability to influence these systems. Our podcast aims to bridge that gap by showing students—and anyone interested in the next generation of doctors—how we think, what we value, and where we believe healthcare should be headed.

This is not just a podcast for medical students. It’s also for physicians curious about how today’s learners are approaching the future of medicine. It’s for policy leaders who want to understand the emerging priorities of tomorrow’s physicians. And it’s for fellow students who may not yet see themselves as “advocates” but are ready to take their first step toward action.

Ultimately, our vision is to help cultivate a generation of physicians who view advocacy not as an optional add-on, but as a fundamental aspect of what it means to practice medicine. Through this podcast, we hope to not only inform but inspire—giving listeners the context, confidence, and motivation to engage with healthcare issues that affect us all.

By expanding our committee’s work from Instagram and written articles into the podcast space, we are embracing a format that resonates with how people connect and learn today. The podcast will be published on our official student advocacy website www.amamedicalstudents.ca and shared through the Alberta Medical Association’s main site at www.albertadoctors.org, helping us reach a broader audience across the province and beyond.