Pediatrics

DEA fear is reshaping how doctors prescribe

Physician

June 2, 2026

For more than three decades, I prescribed Schedule II stimulants to children and adolescents with ADHD. I did it carefully, consistently, and always within clinical standards. Yet throughout those years, I carried a quiet, persistent fear, not of harming patients, but of being misinterpreted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

That fear wasn’t irrational. It was structural.

The DEA’s enforcement posture has long treated volume as suspicion, clinical judgment as potential misconduct, …

How to raise teenagers ready for the real world

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Physician

May 30, 2026

After sharing numerous thoughts on pain management and the health care system, which are topics I am deeply passionate about, I decided for a moment to step out of my role as a physician and share some personal insights I encounter regularly as a parent raising teenagers. At times, this journey can feel even more challenging than practicing medicine.

Raising a teenager today feels like navigating a beautiful storm. One moment, …

The quiet loss of dignity in medicine

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

May 25, 2026

When institutions begin to fear the consequences of telling the truth, the First Amendment becomes a parchment promise rather than a living principle. Medicine is not immune to this cultural shift. Physicians who once spoke freely about patient safety, training standards, and systemic failures now hesitate, not because they lack conviction, but because the corporate structures around them punish candor. The result is a profession that has lost not only …

Read more…

The quiet loss of dignity in medicine

The medical case for teaching kindness in early childhood development

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

Physician

May 8, 2026

As a physician, I encounter humanity at its most unguarded. I have held trembling hands, delivered devastating news, and witnessed emotions stripped of pretense. In exam rooms and hospital corridors, patterns emerge with unsettling consistency. Under stress, fear, or pain, humans default to self-protection. We become impatient. Defensive. Sometimes cruel. Not because we are irredeemable, but because survival instincts speak loudly when vulnerability is exposed. Kindness, by contrast, does not …

What physicians and dragonflies share in resilience and agility

Gita Balakumar, MD

Physician

May 5, 2026

Do you ever feel like a hovering helicopter, eyes fixed on every corner of the horizon, yet swift and nimble to the next need, while trying to stay aloft with a missing blade? If you have ever stood in the middle of a shift, a surgery, a conversation, or a decision that could not wait, and felt all of that at once, then you already know what it is to …

Treating adolescent opioid use disorder with buprenorphine

Chris Buresh, MD, MPH

Conditions

May 5, 2026

I recently reviewed the case of a 17-year-old who came into the emergency department (ED) after a friend found him unresponsive at a party. He had taken what he thought was a Percocet. It was fentanyl. He survived because his friend called 911 and paramedics arrived with naloxone in time. But here is what happened next: nothing. He was observed, medically cleared, and discharged. No one offered him naloxone to …

Overcoming barriers to holding babies with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy during therapeutic cooling

Newborn Brain Society and Hope for HIE

Conditions

April 27, 2026

Imagine going to the hospital after nine months of pregnancy expecting to have a perfect birth and baby only to suffer from a tragic birth complication. Your doctor shares that your baby has a brain injury and must be transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for cooling treatment. You meet your baby surrounded by machines and loud monitors. For three long days during this cooling treatment, you are …

Peer-led storytelling in adolescent substance use prevention

Stephen M. Sandelich, MD and Anthony Alvarado

Conditions

April 8, 2026

Every week in the pediatric emergency department, I see the consequences of adolescent substance use that started too early and went unaddressed for too long. A teenager in crisis. A family blindsided. A window of prevention that closed long before anyone realized it was open.

We keep asking the same question: How do we reach kids before it gets to this point?

The answer, it turns out, might already be sitting in …

Leucovorin for autism: Why physicians must protect hope from hype

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

April 3, 2026

In September 2025, The Atlantic reported on a frenzy surrounding leucovorin, a folate derivative long used in oncology and rheumatology. Families desperate for answers were suddenly told it might be a miracle therapy for autism. Waitlists stretched years, clinics were overwhelmed, and hope surged. The problem was not just scientific, it was political. When President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed leucovorin, they amplified demand …

When the doctor is also the patient’s mom: Navigating severe autism

Joele Tueno Scott

Conditions

April 1, 2026

Today I received a call from my son’s school informing me that he had been suspended for injuring his teacher and hurting another staff member. The week prior, I had received multiple calls requesting that I pick him up early due to escalating behaviors.

My story is not unique. Across the country, parents of children with autism navigate aggressive outbursts, elopement, self-harm, and school suspensions. We juggle IEP meetings, medication adjustments, …

Pediatric home health care oversight: Why accountability is failing

Ashley Youngdale

Conditions

March 26, 2026

When my medically complex son Declan came home from the hospital, he needed round-the-clock care, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A full-time worker puts in about 1,960 hours a year, assuming 40 hours a week minus vacation and holidays. Each year has 8,760 hours. That means caring for Declan required an equivalent of 4.47 full-time employees every year.

In Minnesota, where we live, for even the highest-acuity cases, …

Communicating health to children: a pediatrician’s guide for parents

Joey Skelton, MD

Conditions

March 24, 2026

An excerpt from Your Child Is Not Their Weight: Parenting in a Size-Obsessed World, with permission from the American Academy of Pediatrics, 2026.

A friend and colleague who is a doctor in adult medicine made this comment to me several years ago: “My patients with kids have a harder time with their health than those who do not have kids!”

I pointed out to her that the “patients with kids” she …

The danger of detachment: How medical training reveals character

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

March 22, 2026

In 2016, Lauren Gambill wrote on KevinMD about being told, “She is not yours to grieve,” after a patient’s death. The message was clear: Grief was weakness, and physicians were expected to suppress it. Nearly a decade later, Arthur Lazarus argued that medical training does not change personality; it reveals scaffolding. He cited a “Blue Bloods” episode where Danny Reagan dismissed a racist watch leader and former cop with the …

Why the Oregon National Primate Research Center is shutting down

Marge Peppercorn, MD

Physician

March 18, 2026

Update from Oregon Health & Science University:

Oregon Health & Science University clarifies that no decisions have been made about the Oregon National Primate Center at OHSU.

In February, the OHSU Board of Directors authorized the university president to enter discussions with the National Institutes of Health about the possibility of transitioning the ONPRC to a primate sanctuary.

The board passed a resolution to begin a six-month timeframe for the parties to develop …

Shift from universal to optional vaccination risks normalizing preventable disease [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 17, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Medical student Umayr R. Shaikh discusses his article “The impact of CDC’s new childhood immunization guidance.” Umayr argues that recent CDC changes, moving vaccines like flu, Hep B, and meningococcal from universal …

Adult disability care transition: Why medicine must grow up

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

“Let’s Fly.” Captain Burnham’s words on the USS Discovery were more than a command. They were a declaration of trust, of forward motion, of refusing paralysis.

That is the question before us now: What happens when children with disabilities grow up?

For decades, pediatrics treated disability as a childhood condition. The grant language, the fellowship training, the systems of care, all built on the assumption that disability ends at eighteen. But children …

Why medicine ignores its Cassandras: a case study in health disparities

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

March 9, 2026

Cassandra saw the future. No one believed her. Medicine has its Cassandras too, clinicians who name the failures before anyone else. Their warnings are dismissed, their foresight ignored, until the damage is undeniable.

This essay is built on an AI comparison. It set my 1998 Nisonger grant beside my 2025 testimony. The themes are identical: health disparities, economic justice, ethics, listening to families. I named them then. I name them now. …

Leadership in action: How a broken pager fixed a hospital

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

February 24, 2026

Sometimes, the smallest failures expose the largest truths. At a remote Air Force base hospital, a silent pager revealed not my incompetence, but my supervisor’s lack of leadership, and set in motion a chain of events that reshaped the hospital’s command structure and ultimately influenced the future of Air Force pediatrics.

What began as a malfunction during an award ceremony became the catalyst for decisive leadership, a reorganization of medical services, …

The pause medicine never taught us to take

Mary Wilde, MD

Physician

February 17, 2026

As physicians, most of us do not need another Zoom webinar on burnout; we need open space.

Even at the earliest stages of training, we are made to feel that we cannot take a break. In a med school course I teach, I assigned a renewal activity with a short reflection. Some protested, but most expressed gratitude for an assigned pause.

Many admitted how afraid they felt to step away, to take …

The honest broker in pediatrics: Building the medical home

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

February 17, 2026

When I arrived at a regional military hospital, it was not a dispensary or a community clinic. It was the referral hospital for the northern tier missile and bomber bases, positioned just below the major medical centers. We were second tier, but the stakes were global.

Into that setting, I brought the medical home and a mini-developmental clinic. Through a program for exceptional family members, families from around the world found …

Pediatrics

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts