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Conditions

Does silence as a faculty retention strategy in academic medicine and health sciences work?

Conditions
May 17, 2025

Faculty retention remains an ongoing concern for colleges and universities, especially at a time when there is a clear misalignment between the socio-political environment, the mission of higher education, and the values held by most faculty. If you’ve been paying attention, you know: higher education is experiencing waves of faculty disengagement.

However, some institutions respond to crises not with dialogue, but with silence. They avoid confronting faculty concerns …

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Why personal responsibility is not enough in the fight against nicotine addiction

Conditions
May 17, 2025

In an interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed whether society should bear the cost of health care for individuals whose health problems are largely self-inflicted, citing smoking as an example. He questioned the fairness of providing the same level of care to people who, in his words, “predictably get sick” from behaviors like smoking as to those born with congenital illnesses.

While emphasizing personal responsibility is important, this …

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AI in mental health: a new frontier for therapy and support

Conditions
May 16, 2025

The mental health crisis in America continues to intensify. With therapist shortages, high costs, and long waitlists, there are millions of people without access to therapy. As a cognitive scientist who analyzed therapy transcripts in grad school and now develops AI mental health applications, I’ve observed artificial intelligence emerging as a complementary solution to these accessibility challenges.

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What prostate cancer taught this physician about being a patient

Conditions
May 16, 2025

I recently wrote about my experience of becoming a patient and how that change in role transformed my perspective as a doctor. But, in that article, I did not share that the reason I had become a patient was that I was undergoing a biopsy for potential prostate cancer.

In preparation for the procedure, the doctor reassured me that the outlook was good and that he did not expect to …

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Why ADHD in women is finally getting the attention it deserves

Conditions
May 15, 2025

More women than ever before are receiving ADHD diagnoses. From 2020 to 2022, the percentage of adult women with a new diagnosis nearly doubled, and clinicians continue to encounter higher rates of women seeking assessments.

It’s reassuring that, after decades of association with rambunctious little boys, ADHD is finally being acknowledged as a condition that can affect anyone, regardless of age or …

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Why ruling out sepsis in emergency departments can be lifesaving

Conditions
May 15, 2025

It’s a common scenario in the emergency department (ED). Peak cold and flu season brings in patients complaining of fever and chills, with increased heart rates and elevated white blood cell counts. Too many patients, not enough beds. As emergency medicine providers, we have to make quick, challenging decisions at triage, prioritizing the sickest patients based on their vitals and symptoms and getting them on the right care pathway.

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The hidden cost of delaying back surgery

Conditions
May 15, 2025

Spinal surgery patients frequently present to me after multiple years of managing their chronic back pain through physical therapy, injections, medications, and alternative treatment methods. Patients arrive at my office already worn out physically and emotionally drained from frustration about their chronic condition. What increases my concern is that irreversible damage has already resulted in many cases, which could have been reduced or prevented through earlier surgical treatment.

I recommend starting …

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Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

Conditions
May 13, 2025

Since the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when civil service exams evaluated intellectual abilities, people have used cognitive assessments to identify special talents or, more commonly, to detect problems.

We’ve come a long way in 2,000 years! Today, neuropsychological batteries—combinations of assessments to detect dementia, learning disabilities, and cognitive impairments from chronic conditions or acute events—are widely used. Yet, far too often, these assessments are administered reactively, only after severe deficits …

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Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions

Conditions
May 13, 2025

In 2025, more than 38 million, or 1 in 10 Americans, live with Type 2 diabetes.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of the modern health care system, traditional care strategies for Type 2 diabetes often vastly overlook long-term individual and societal health outcomes in favor of short-term management of the disease. With over 20 years of experience as an endocrinologist at Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center, and as the Chief Medical Officer …

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A speech pathologist’s key to better, safer patient care

Conditions
May 12, 2025

“Some doctors type notes with their backs turned while I say things. I have aphasia. I need to be able to see people’s mouths and their eyes to help me understand.”

As a certified speech-language pathologist (SLP), I have spent most of my career working across the continuum of health care with people who have communication disabilities, such as aphasia. My patients have also included people with other …

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How collaboration saved my life from a rare disease doctors couldn’t diagnose

Conditions
May 11, 2025

So what exactly does collaborative health care mean? When we break this down into categories, there are three main approaches, each with a different benefit but ideally sharing the same end goal: to better improve patient outcomes. First, doctor to alternative practitioner. Secondly, patient to doctor. Lastly, patient to patient.

Years ago, I went through one of the biggest health battles of my life after being diagnosed with granulomatous mastitis (GM). …

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Why your emotions are your greatest compass in therapy and life

Conditions
May 10, 2025

In his book Ways of Attending, McGilchrist (2016) discusses a difference in attention—one that seeks organization and one that any attempt at organizing subverts. A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, just by looking, it is disturbed. In differing translations of Tranströmer’s poem Prelude from 17 Dikter (1954), about the moment upon wakening from a dream, he captures the infinite possibility that slides one fully awake into a new day, and which …

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Patients are not waiting: What MCDA twin parents teach us about shared decision-making

Conditions
May 10, 2025

Monochorionic diamniotic (MCDA) twin pregnancies come with more scans, more risk, and more decisions to make in very little time. Parents are expected to absorb complex medical information, navigate unfamiliar terminology, and act quickly, often under pressure. When care teams do not meet that need for clarity and support, parents do what any reasonable person would do.

They go looking for answers.

In 2024, we published a study in Midwifery that explored …

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Health workers deserve care too: How to protect their mental health

Conditions
May 9, 2025

Kim Downey:

A friend shared with me how she told someone their mutual physician was on medical leave. She heard it was serious. That person’s immediate response was concern over how it would affect their upcoming appointment. My friend said she thought of my advocacy work, initiating a conversation fostering empathy for the struggling physician.

I read a post by a surgeon, with fellow doctors commenting …

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Why the words doctors use matter more than they think

Conditions
May 8, 2025

I recently attended a medical conference for the Huntington’s disease (HD) community. Hundreds of people were gathered to collaborate, share knowledge, and learn how to better address the needs of their patients. During the first session, I found it challenging to listen to the presentation and the conversations taking place around me. The detached manner in which people were speaking was troubling to me, so I stepped out for a …

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How AI helped me reclaim my creative mind with ADHD

Conditions
May 6, 2025

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand and tame my own mind.

I meditate—have for years. I journal. I go to therapy. I’ve devoted years of my life to endurance sports to “get out of my head,” I even lived at a yoga ashram. I’ve done the work, or at least, a lot of it. I don’t think I’m unfamiliar with introspection or emotional hygiene.

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When asking one more question can change everything

Conditions
May 5, 2025

She looked relatively healthy. Middle-aged, calm, composed. She had tried everything—until she hadn’t. That’s how she found herself on the OR schedule for a hysterectomy.

Years of irregular, heavy bleeding had led her here. She didn’t want surgery, but she was tired. Tired of bleeding, tired of not being heard, tired of grasping for answers. This was the final option, or so it seemed.

But then, just before the surgery, a resident …

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A doctor’s emotional struggle with a young leukemia patient

Conditions
May 3, 2025

I am currently working as a senior registrar in the oncology unit of a trust hospital. We admit both oncology and hematology patients in the same ward, meaning we care for patients with solid tumors as well as those with blood cancers. Our hospital has only one oncology ward, which has ten beds. Since it is a trust hospital, most treatments are provided completely free of charge. I love working …

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DSM-5 doesn’t name it, but moral distress is everywhere in medicine

Conditions
May 3, 2025

The mental health crisis clinicians face but won’t talk about this May

Ask anyone about health care reform, and you’ll likely get passionate responses. Single-payer versus market-driven. Universal coverage versus cost-containment. Clinicians, though, usually have simpler wishes: fewer hours spent charting, more time spent actually caring.

But there’s a quieter, deeper conversation that’s rarely included when we talk about health care’s problems: moral distress.

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