Hospital-Based Medicine

What is your physician well-being strategy?

Physician
October 31, 2025

Every health care organization measures recruitment and retention. HR teams work to offer competitive packages based on salary, benefits, PTO, and CME allowances. These details matter. But for today’s physicians, these are simply the baseline. The physicians entering and shaping today’s workforce expect more. They have new lines of questioning related to the amount of evening and weekend coverage, call schedules, administrative time, and available support staff. Today’s physicians will …

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How a dying patient taught a doctor the meaning of care [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 30, 2025
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Internal medicine physician Augusta Uwah discusses her article, “The dying man who gave me flowers changed how I see care.” She shares the emotional story of a terminally ill patient whose simple …

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Telehealth licensing barriers hurt patients

Physician
October 29, 2025

The highway from western North Carolina to northeast Georgia is dark at five in the morning. One of my long-time patients grips the wheel and drives two hours for a 15-minute visit with the doctor she trusts. She could have met me by video from her kitchen, but the law forbids it. The moment she crosses that state line, I lose the right to care for her. That’s not medicine. …

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When a rural hospital dies

Physician
October 29, 2025

This morning marked a sad ending to my night shift. It was, or rather, had been, at a small community hospital in a tiny New England town, nestled in the backyards of where I was born and raised. But in just a few days, it will cease to exist as a hospital and morph into a stand-alone ER. Before I wrapped up my final shift, I sat down with a …

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A physician’s tribute to respiratory therapists

Conditions
October 13, 2025

Larry is a friend. We are not besties. He is a neighbor, a few miles down the road from our forty-eight-acre hobby farm in our quaint little town, surrounded by farmland, generational farmers, rusted old tractors, cornfields, livestock, and a few homes interspersed in between. He is a neighbor, nonetheless. And a friend.

I first met Larry when we were building our country home, where my wife dreamt of raising a …

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Can a doctor’s personal post violate their oath?

Conditions
September 29, 2025

At lunch on September 10, 2025, I opened Instagram for a palate cleanser: cute dog videos, life hack reels, something sweet and uplifting. Instead, I ran into a video and headline I wanted to dismiss as a deepfake. It was graphic and disorienting and, for a few seconds, I tried to bargain with reality: This cannot be real, and if it is, how is it on my phone? Would it …

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Why nurse-initiated sepsis protocols are transforming patient care and hospital efficiency [PODCAST]

Podcast
September 25, 2025
YouTube video

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Chief nursing officer Rhonda Collins discusses her article “Nurse-initiated protocols for sepsis: a strategic imperative for patient care and hospital operations.” Rhonda explains why sepsis, the leading cause of death in U.S. …

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The parallel evolution of computer chess and AI in health care: the inevitable journey to embracing cognitive inferiority

Physician
September 24, 2025

As an academic trauma surgeon and intensive care physician, I have spent decades honing my clinical skills and teaching them to others. The recent milestone reached by Microsoft’s new AI system, the MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), is a reminder that the cognitive frontier of medicine is shifting, not gradually, but in leaps. MAI-DxO reportedly diagnosed complex cases from the New England Journal of Medicine with eighty percent accuracy, compared to …

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He begged for mercy and his family refused

Conditions
September 21, 2025

In the hierarchy of health care professionals, I supposedly stand on one of the lowest steps of that ladder. Some say I am just a CNA. Some say I am the backbone of nurses and physicians. I say: I am a strategic part of this ladder. I do not have the medical knowledge or skills of a physician nor of a nurse. But what I do have is a heart …

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Lessons on compassion and autonomy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Physician
September 20, 2025

The first time I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it stayed with me for days. As an internist who has had the opportunity to care for psychiatric patients, I could not watch it as just a movie. I saw the familiar faces, the emotional extremes, the silent battles between care and control. And I felt the weight of questions the film still asks us today: Are we truly …

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How profit-driven hospitals fail long-term patient care

Conditions
September 18, 2025

Gasping for breath, Michael (name changed) pushed back in his chair. His legs felt like lead weights. He could not delay the rescue call any longer. The oxygen in his blood had dipped into the 80s.

An X-ray showed a shadow over the lower part of Michael’s right lung, and the hospital admitted him to treat a pneumonia. A smoker for decades, he was relieved a few days later to be …

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How I learned to love my unique name as a doctor

Physician
September 16, 2025

Born a son to immigrant parents, one of whom did not speak any English early on in my youth, I struggled to assimilate to American culture, to friends, and to the everyday language and vernacular during my formative years in grade school, middle school, and even high school. My mother raised my brother, sister, and me while my father worked two, and sometimes three, jobs to make ends meet. Mom …

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My first week on night float as a medical student

Education
September 16, 2025

I had heard about night float: a daunting rotation for interns as they cared for patients they often were not well acquainted with, putting out fires until their usual team could take over in the morning. Given this reputation, I was surprised to find a night float week on my schedule as part of my internal medicine clerkship, a core rotation as a third-year medical student.

My first patient was a …

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Why so many patients ask for drips—and what doctors wish they knew

Physician
September 6, 2025

As a doctor working in a primary health care setting, it’s become routine, almost expected, to hear patients ask for a drip. Sometimes it’s after they’ve listed their symptoms, sometimes they say it right after walking in: “Doctor, please just give me drip.” And often, the complaints aren’t serious. It could be catarrh, a mild fever, or even plain tiredness.

At first, I didn’t understand it. I’d look at the patient’s …

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The dying man who gave me flowers changed how I see care

Physician
September 2, 2025

Today for the first time, I got flowers from a grateful patient.

And I reflect on how rough the week has been, all the things that seemed impossible and insurmountable, and everything that has brought me to this point. The patient is going on hospice, he’s going to die, yet he felt that I made a significant impact that he wanted to show his gratitude. And that almost brought me to …

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Why AI must support, not replace, human intuition in health care

Tech
August 9, 2025

When I was a new hospitalist in a tertiary center, I once told a colleague, “Looks like I got an easy admit.” He just stared at me.

It didn’t take long to understand why.

Vitals can be stable. Labs can look clean. But patients—especially those we assume are “simple”—rarely are. There’s a language beyond numbers: the way a patient breathes, a hesitation in their tone, the look in a spouse’s eye. Over …

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The quiet grief behind hospital walls

Physician
July 15, 2025

The slow beeping of the monitor comes to a halt and someone eventually shuts it off.

Click clack.

The machines are quiet now. I take one more look at the innocent, boyish young face and wonder what kind of life he had led. I leave the room, along with the rest of the team. A hand draws the curtain closed.

Death.

Quite literally, the most final force on Earth. The permanent, irreversible cessation of …

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Dear July intern: It’s normal to feel clueless—here’s what matters

Education
July 13, 2025

It’s July—the official new year for medicine.

You’re either a brand-new intern, wide-eyed and exhausted, equal parts proud and terrified, or maybe you’re stepping into fellowship, wondering how you’re suddenly supposed to be the expert. You’re navigating hallways you haven’t mapped yet, still figuring out whether your badge works on the north wing or the south elevator, trying to remember where you parked, and already questioning if you made a huge …

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A physician’s reflection on love, loss, and finding meaning in grief [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 1, 2025
YouTube video

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Hospitalist Jasminka Vukanovic-Criley discusses her article, “When grief hits all at once: a morning of heartbreak and love.” Jasminka shares a deeply personal account of a Saturday morning where unexpected news of …

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