Physician voices

12,713 articles · Since 2006

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the life of the profession: the work itself, the exhaustion, what women physicians are paid and asked to carry, the losses the profession has been slow to name, and who decides how physicians work. Five maintained records draw on this archive: Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words, Primary care: what physicians say, in their own words, Women in medicine: what women physicians say, in their own words, Physician suicide: what physicians say, in their own words, and Physicians and administrators: what physicians say about who runs medicine, in their own words.

Latest articles

Concierge medicine gave this family doctor his time back

Michael C. Luciano, DO

October 27, 2026Oct 27, 2026

Seventeen years ago, I opened a family medicine practice with a simple goal: take care of my community. I am board-certified in family medicine and obesity medicine, and I loved the work. What I did not love was what the…

Like many of you, I spent my days racing a clock I didn’t set. Short visits. Prior authorizations stacked on my desk. Evenings spent finishing notes while my …

Impostor syndrome in physicians is about worth, not skill

Christine Kempton, MD

October 27, 2026Oct 27, 2026

A fellow sits across from my desk, talking about becoming faculty in a few months. She's nervous about her first attending rotation on the consult service and wonders whether she should do an extra rotation before her fellowship ends, just…

A fellow sits across from my desk, talking about becoming faculty in a few months. She’s nervous about her first attending rotation on the consult service and wonders whether she should do an extra rotation before her fellowship ends, just to be sure she is ready. She doesn’t want to disappoint anyone.

Down the hall, a junior faculty member works hard to prove her value. She sees the patients, writes the …

When caring for Medicaid patients hurts the bottom line

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 27, 2026Oct 27, 2026

When I arrived in Phoenix, families seeking developmental evaluations often faced a bewildering process. A child with suspected autism might spend 90 minutes with a pediatric nurse practitioner. Parents completed multiple questionnaires. Detailed histories stretched for ten to twenty pages.…

Only after navigating this maze would the child finally see a developmental-behavioral pediatrician. Parents hated it. I didn’t blame them.

The system was not designed …

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Women’s pain dismissed as stress can have a treatable source

American Society of Anesthesiologists & Anita Gupta, DO, PharmD

October 26, 2026Oct 26, 2026

A patient came to my clinic after three years of being told her pain was "probably stress." She had seen her primary care doctor, two orthopedists, and a neurologist. She had tried medications, been handed pamphlets, and learned to apologize…

A patient came to my clinic after three years of being told her pain was “probably stress.” She had seen her primary care doctor, two orthopedists, and a neurologist. She had tried medications, been handed pamphlets, and learned to apologize for bringing it up at all. By the time she reached me, she had stopped believing anyone in medicine would take her pain seriously.

She is not unusual. She is the …

Hunger, delays, and the making of a difficult patient

Dalia Saha, MD

October 26, 2026Oct 26, 2026

When I see patients these days, it is usually in a hospital. Most are not particularly happy to be there. They are sick, uncomfortable, frightened, or simply exhausted by whatever brought them through the emergency department and into a hospital bed. For a long time, I assumed that their frustration with being in the hospital was simply part of being sick. Of course people don’t want to be hospitalized. And, …

The question to ask new patients that intake forms skip

Timothy Lesaca, MD

October 25, 2026Oct 25, 2026

The first patient appointment begins long before we introduce ourselves. Patients often spend days gathering records, completing forms, reading about symptoms, and contemplating what we might say. As a result, by the time we meet, they may also have formed expectations about how we will respond. They may have read your biography and online reviews, but those descriptions cannot tell them whether you will welcome a difficult question or let …

What is physician career success without a trophy case?

Jayson Greenberg, MD

October 25, 2026Oct 25, 2026

I recently read a press release announcing a physician as the new head of a regional health system. Among his accomplishments were six consecutive "Top Doctor" citations and a long list of other accolades. Closer to the end of my…

I recently read a press release announcing a physician as the new head of a regional health system. Among his accomplishments were six consecutive “Top Doctor” citations and a long list of other accolades. Closer to the end of my career than the beginning, I found myself taking stock of my accomplishments. My trophy case looked decidedly sparse in comparison, and I started to question my legacy and impact.

My trophy …

Medical storytelling and the doctor who forgot his lines

Ian Barbash, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

It wasn't a great performance. It might not even have been good. But I did it. When I stepped down from the stage, I just felt relieved. I had diligently memorized my lines. I started off by telling the audience…

It wasn’t a great performance. It might not even have been good. But I did it. When I stepped down from the stage, I just felt relieved.

I had diligently memorized my lines. I started off by telling the audience about the time I nearly tipped over trying to put on my underwear. That drew a laugh, as I had hoped it would. For the next seven minutes, the performance went …

How serial patent litigation delays cheaper generic drugs

Reuben Mathew, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

As a physician caring for patients in New Orleans, I see the consequences of America's prescription drug affordability crisis every day. Many of my patients need essential medications like insulin, blood thinners, and inhalers to manage chronic conditions that impact…

As a physician caring for patients in New Orleans, I see the consequences of America’s prescription drug affordability crisis every day. Many of my patients need essential medications like insulin, blood thinners, and inhalers to manage chronic conditions that impact their day-to-day lives. But far too often, these medicines are unaffordable, even for patients with solid health insurance.

One major reason prescription medicines are so expensive is a little-known Big Pharma …

Frivolous malpractice lawsuits need a quantitative test

Howard Smith, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 20262

Many books describe medical malpractice. Among them are Medical Malpractice; Medical Malpractice: A Physician's Sourcebook; The Malpractice Myth; A Measure of Malpractice: Medical Injury, Malpractice Litigation, and Patient Compensation; Medical Malpractice: Theory, Evidence, and Public Policy; To Err Is Human;…

Many books describe medical malpractice. Among them are Medical Malpractice; Medical Malpractice: A Physician’s Sourcebook; The Malpractice Myth; A Measure of Malpractice: Medical Injury, Malpractice Litigation, and Patient Compensation; Medical Malpractice: Theory, Evidence, and Public Policy; To Err Is Human; Medical Law and Ethics; and Medical Liability and Treatment Relationships: A Physician’s Insight Into Medical Negligence. These are all described as “groundbreaking.”

I developed a decision-making method that I call Collate, …

What 3 bicycles taught me about physician resilience

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

When I was ten years old in Japan, I got a bicycle. It was a simple machine: one speed, coaster brake, no gears, and no pretensions. Designed for the flat Kanto Plain surrounding Tokyo, it was perfectly suited for its environment. For the next decade, it carried me through childhood, adolescence, and multiple moves as an Air Force dependent. The bicycle never failed me.

After my father died and our family …

Why storytelling in health care outlasts the algorithm

Ryan McCarthy, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

On Friday, March 13, 2020, Governor Jim Justice held a press conference, one I watched virtually, and, as I ate cheddar cheese and Triscuits and put my feet on my desk, I felt unwell. The previous weekend had been the last “normal” thing my son, Isaac, would do in high school, the West Virginia All-State High School Band. And by “normal” I mean a superspreader event where my entire family …

Leaving clinical practice without leaving medicine

Riya Joshi, MD, PhD, MPH

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

There was a time when my daily work meant sitting across from a patient in an exam room. I listened to symptoms, asked questions, performed physical examinations, ordered laboratory tests, tried to arrive at a diagnosis, and then prescribed medicine. Today, my world looks very different. The person sitting across from me has been replaced by a screen. Instead of examining patients, I examine datasets, clinical trial tables and listings, …

What The Hunger Games reveals about moral injury in medicine

Dr. Rida Jawed

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 20263

Shortly after graduating from my emergency medicine training, I reread The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I didn't expect a dystopian novel to follow me into the emergency department, but it did. Somewhere between ambulance radios, a full waiting room,…

Shortly after graduating from my emergency medicine training, I reread The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I didn’t expect a dystopian novel to follow me into the emergency department, but it did. Somewhere between ambulance radios, a full waiting room, and those pages, I realized how familiar the logic felt. Not the violence. The structure.

Both worlds revolve around the same question: What happens when there isn’t enough, and someone has …

Why I wrote a medical thriller about patients’ secrets

Renda K. Knapp, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

The most important moment of a medical appointment usually happens at the very end, with a hand on the doorknob. Every physician knows the moment. The visit is over. The official reason for it (the refill, the checkup, the cough) has been handled. And then, as she reaches for the door, the patient pauses. “Actually, there’s one more thing.”

In thirty years as an OB/GYN, I have learned that the one …

Outdated medical information needs an expiration date

Dr. Aman Mishra

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

An article can be accurate the day it's published and misleading by the time you read it. Nothing about the text changes. The evidence underneath it does. That's the part search engines and social feeds don't tell you. A page…

An article can be accurate the day it’s published and misleading by the time you read it. Nothing about the text changes. The evidence underneath it does.

That’s the part search engines and social feeds don’t tell you. A page looks current (clean design, working links, top of the search results) while its core recommendation is stale, superseded by a trial, a safety alert, a new diagnostic cutoff, or an updated …

What health care gets wrong about mid-career physicians

Ben Feldman, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

I'll never forget the moment when I knew I was going to have to make a big transition. After more than a decade of navigating what had become an ongoing tension between work and life, I remember running the numbers…

I’ll never forget the moment when I knew I was going to have to make a big transition. After more than a decade of navigating what had become an ongoing tension between work and life, I remember running the numbers one evening and realizing something had to give. My overhead and schedule pressures became impossible to ignore.

As a private-practice otolaryngologist, I lived and worked in the same community where my …

Is teen anxiety normal or a disorder? Both answers can fail.

Timothy Lesaca, MD

October 21, 2026Oct 21, 2026

Teenage anxiety is real, but if we treat every feeling as a medical issue, we might overlook what is truly important. When a teen says, "I'm anxious," we shouldn't have to choose between saying, "You have a disorder," or "That's…

Teenage anxiety is real, but if we treat every feeling as a medical issue, we might overlook what is truly important. When a teen says, “I’m anxious,” we shouldn’t have to choose between saying, “You have a disorder,” or “That’s just adolescence.” Both responses can shut down a conversation before it even starts.

A 2026 study in JAMA Pediatrics reveals this distinction. Analyzing 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health …

Why a pre-med took the physics course meant for majors

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 21, 2026Oct 21, 2026

When I arrived at Boston University in 1975, I carried more than a class schedule. I carried doubts. I had graduated from English High School in Boston during the turbulent years of court-ordered desegregation. Although I had performed well academically,…

When I arrived at Boston University in 1975, I carried more than a class schedule. I carried doubts.

I had graduated from English High School in Boston during the turbulent years of court-ordered desegregation. Although I had performed well academically, I knew many people viewed graduates of urban public schools as less prepared than students from elite suburban schools and prestigious private academies.

Medical schools would eventually decide whether I was qualified. …

A doctor with bipolar disorder: reflections on medicine

Dr. Angelika Luehrs

October 20, 2026Oct 20, 20262

During my medical training in 2004, I was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder. Prior to my diagnosis, a consultant had told me that having a mental illness recorded in my medical notes would mean the end of my career in medicine. He was wrong. I received treatment, completed my training, and became a consultant psychiatrist.

My interest in psychiatry began before my own diagnosis. I was attracted to a specialty that …

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