KevinMD.com

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

For much of my medical training, I assumed there were two basic career paths for physicians. You could become an employed physician, trading some autonomy for stability and institutional support. Or you could own a practice, accepting the administrative and…

I ultimately chose neither.

For approximately a decade, I have built my clinical career primarily as an independent contractor. As an …

Medical Education

Should medical student research be banned?

Joshua P. Parreco, MD

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

I run student and resident research projects as a trauma surgeon. For years the emails trickled in. This year they do not. Students arrive with a question and a draft and ask to be put on a paper. Large language models made literature searches, coding, chart review, and a first manuscript cheaper. They noticed.

On August 20, Will Flanary, better known as Dr. Glaucomflecken, titled a podcast episode “Medical Student …

Health Policy

3 ways communities can ease the loneliness epidemic

Tista S. Ghosh, MD, MPH

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

Imagine if we only treated lung cancer and never tackled smoking. Is that what we're doing with depression? We always ask people struggling with depression to reach out. But maybe we should also ask whether anyone is within reach. Every…

Imagine if we only treated lung cancer and never tackled smoking. Is that what we’re doing with depression? We always ask people struggling with depression to reach out. But maybe we should also ask whether anyone is within reach.

Every October, Depression Awareness Month urges us to recognize the symptoms and seek help. As a physician, I support that message. As a public health and preventive medicine practitioner, I also ask …

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Physician

Dual-physician couples don’t need work-life balance

Inna Massaro, DO, MMM and Dr. Saulat Sajjad Sheikh

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

We get asked this all the time: "How do you do it? How do you raise kids, manage a household, remember that someone needs poster board for school tomorrow, get everyone to practice, and somehow sustain two demanding physician careers?"…

We get asked this all the time: “How do you do it? How do you raise kids, manage a household, remember that someone needs poster board for school tomorrow, get everyone to practice, and somehow sustain two demanding physician careers?” The answer is: not gracefully. We have calendars. We have systems. We have childcare. We outsource things. We occasionally feed our children cereal for dinner, and somewhere, at almost all …

Physician Finance

The 457(b) plan risks physicians sign without knowing

Mike Chando, MBA

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

On a Tuesday evening, Dr. Anna Reyes is offered a partnership in an independent group across town. Accepting means leaving the nonprofit health system that employs her, and the buy-in requires capital within the year. Anna is hypothetical. That night,…

That night, she opens the statement for the 457(b) deferred compensation plan she has funded for eight years. The balance is about $500,000. She wants to know how much of it she can …

Health Policy

The developmental pediatrician shortage is about to deepen

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

A recent Guardian article described a troubling reality unfolding across England: Nearly 1 million people are waiting for ADHD assessments, approximately 295,000 are awaiting autism evaluations, and some National Health Service (NHS) regions have imposed minimum waiting periods of two years before patients can even be assessed. “Two-year waiting times highlight NHS struggle with rise in ADHD and autism awareness” reported that overwhelmed health systems are struggling to keep …

Podcast

Loneliness, not weakness, is driving women out of medicine [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Medical training hands you a ready-made group of friends. Then it ends, and many women physicians find themselves starting over alone in a new city. Cassie Burton Greenbaum is a pediatric critical care physician and the founder of Off Service…

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Physician

My first year as an attending physician almost broke me

Elizabeth Rubin Ribak, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

I can finally write this essay almost five years out. That's how long it took me to fully heal. To process. To gain perspective. I graduated residency in June 2020 at the height of COVID. I, along with my family,…

I can finally write this essay almost five years out. That’s how long it took me to fully heal. To process. To gain perspective.

I graduated residency in June 2020 at the height of COVID. I, along with my family, including my husband, two preschoolers, a four-month-old infant, and two dogs, drove from Miami to Chicago to complete an amazing fellowship. The year was perfect, though masked, sometimes scary, and full …

Medications

Does CVS controlled substance policy put patients at risk?

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Recently, a close friend called me in a panic. He was running dangerously low on lorazepam and asked if I could prescribe a small, bridging quantity over the weekend until his regular refill was due in a few days. As a physician, I wanted to help, but I first advised him to do what any reasonable patient would: call his pharmacy, CVS, explain the situation, and ask for a sliver …

Health Policy

First Nations health care: Consultation is not control

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Canadian health organizations invite First Nations representatives to comment on services after budgets and priorities have already taken shape. Consultation can improve a proposal, but it offers limited influence when the decisions remain elsewhere. Health equity requires First Nations to…

For physicians, governance may seem distant from the examination room. Yet governance determines whether patients …

Physician

Are antidepressant prescriptions for teens rising too fast?

Timothy Lesaca, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

She is fifteen and has been taking sertraline for three weeks. Her mother asks if we can increase the dose, since the first dose didn't work quickly enough. I look at her medication list, which is already longer than mine…

She is fifteen and has been taking sertraline for three weeks. Her mother asks if we can increase the dose, since the first dose didn’t work quickly enough. I look at her medication list, which is already longer than mine was at twice her age. I find myself doing something I rarely do during a seven-minute visit: I pause.

I do not doubt the value of antidepressants. I have seen these …

Physician

Who is liable for direct-to-consumer lab testing?

Joseph Phelan, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Ever had a patient bring in a packet of test results you never ordered and countless questions on results for tests you've never even heard of? If not, prepare yourself. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) lab testing began modestly in 1977 when the…

Ever had a patient bring in a packet of test results you never ordered and countless questions on results for tests you’ve never even heard of? If not, prepare yourself.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) lab testing began modestly in 1977 when the FDA approved at-home pregnancy tests. Over the last 50 years, it has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry offering hundreds of tests without a prescription. Some companies even sell panels of hundreds …

Physician Finance

Dennis Hursh, Esq, on physician employment contracts: a KevinMD subscriber spotlight

Subscriber Spotlight by KevinMD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Dennis Hursh, Esq is a health law attorney with more than 40 years of experience and the founder of Physician Agreements Health Law, which reviews physician employment agreements for a fixed fee. He has published 27 essays on KevinMD since…

Conditions and Diseases

Medication for opioid addiction is the cornerstone of care

Walter S. Wightman, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Addiction. The American Board of Preventive Medicine certified me as an addiction medicine specialist so how bad can the term be? My patients called themselves addicts. Heck, they called themselves junkies and fentanyl fiends. That’s not a license to stigmatize. Nor does it mean that substance use disorder patients appreciate people outside the clan calling them that. Just treat people with respect. The affliction truly is a disease, not a …

Health Policy

How an AI tool explained Ruan v. United States to doctors

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

As a health care educator with three decades of experience in research and hundreds of published papers, I have written at some length both on KevinMD and in clinical journals, concerning the dangers of artificial intelligence in medicine. I have also recently written about the profound differences between meanings of the term “Red Flag” in legal versus clinical contexts. Moreover, I have declared that predictive algorithms on …

Physician

An expert witness got patient autonomy exactly wrong

Howard Smith, MD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

One medical expert for the plaintiff attorney is most credited for the outcome in a widely publicized obstetric malpractice case against an academic medical center. That outcome is, at most, dubious, and that medical expert is, at most, highly credentialed, holding a medical degree along with several additional advanced degrees and training as an obstetrician and as a perinatologist.

It is his opinion that the baby suffered brain damage largely because …

Health Technology

AI psychosis warning signs families should watch for

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

October 1, 2026Oct 1, 2026

In a recent interview with UCSF Magazine, Dr. Karthik Sarma makes a careful point about the phrase "AI psychosis." It implies chatbots cause psychosis directly, and he doesn't think the evidence supports that. He prefers "AI-associated psychosis." Heavy chatbot use,…

In a recent interview with UCSF Magazine, Dr. Karthik Sarma makes a careful point about the phrase “AI psychosis.” It implies chatbots cause psychosis directly, and he doesn’t think the evidence supports that. He prefers “AI-associated psychosis.” Heavy chatbot use, he suggests, may be a symptom of an emerging episode rather than its cause. He also says it’s unlikely that someone with no risk factors or underlying vulnerability to …

Conditions and Diseases

Why health messages fail to change patient behavior

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

October 1, 2026Oct 1, 2026

In a recent poll, people indicated interest in maintaining brain health but expressed ignorance on how to do so. In a second poll, most men believed the herpes vaccine was only for young women, while in a third poll, only about 50 percent of women were aware of the importance of breast cancer screening. Other polls on health care information knowledge have shown similarly large awareness gaps. Given the substantial …

Physician

How therapeutic presence helps patients feel felt

Daniel J. Siegel, MD

October 1, 2026Oct 1, 2026

An excerpt from The Mindful Therapist: An Interpersonal Neurobiology Approach to Healing and Wholeness, second edition. Resonance is the coupling of two autonomous processes into a functional whole without losing the essence of each one. When we resonate with another…

An excerpt from The Mindful Therapist: An Interpersonal Neurobiology Approach to Healing and Wholeness, second edition.

Resonance is the coupling of two autonomous processes into a functional whole without losing the essence of each one. When we resonate with another person, we are changed by them but do not lose our essence in the joining. Resonance is not the same as mirroring or imitating. Resonance enables two differentiated elements of …

Physician

What to tell your anesthesiologist, even if it feels small

Dr. Girishkumar Modi

October 1, 2026Oct 1, 2026

Before surgery, anesthesiologists ask many questions. What medicines are you taking? Do you have any allergies? Have you had anesthesia before? Do you smoke or drink alcohol? Do you take any supplements? Do you snore heavily or use a CPAP…

Some patients answer comfortably. Others hesitate. That is understandable. A few questions may feel personal, and sometimes patients worry that the doctor may judge them. They may also think that …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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