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Urologist William Lynes discusses his article “A urologist’s perspective on presidential health transparency.” William examines the medical plausibility of a former president being diagnosed with widespread metastatic prostate cancer just months after …
Urological analysis of delayed cancer diagnoses in political figures [PODCAST]
We repeat the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” as if it were a folksy reminder to eat better or get a flu shot. But taken seriously, it is not a medical cliché. It is an economic law. And it exposes a devastating flaw in how modern societies choose to spend money.
Prevention is not the opposite of cure. Cure is essential, lifesaving, and often extraordinary. …
The economics of prevention: Why an ounce is worth a pound
Methamphetamine has become an unavoidable presence in South Texas medicine. It shows up in our EDs, clinics, and ICUs, usually framed as a cardiotoxic, neurotoxic, or psychiatric problem. But over the past few years, a different pattern has kept surfacing in my practice: “pneumonia” cases that don’t behave like pneumonia, young lungs that look like ARDS, and hypoxic patients whose imaging and labs do not match the story, until someone …
Methamphetamine-induced lung injury: the hidden diagnosis in South Texas
Assuming a new health care leadership role is both exciting and daunting. Even in the best circumstances, new leaders must navigate a complex web of expectations, relationships, and organizational priorities.
Drawing on over 30 years of health care leadership experience, we have observed that while new leaders bring enthusiasm and vision, they often encounter predictable obstacles. Many receive little to no formal leadership training, leaving them without a structured approach to …
A 6-step framework for new health care leaders
A patient walks into the pharmacy with a prescription. The pharmacist reviews it, recognizes a serious problem, and contacts the prescriber. The prescriber dismisses the concern. The pharmacist has two choices: dispense a medication they know is wrong, or refuse and risk professional consequences. This happens daily. And health care pretends it doesn’t.
The power imbalance nobody discusses
Pharmacists are trained to be medication experts. They study pharmacokinetics, drug interactions, disease-specific dosing, …
The cost of ignoring pharmacist clinical judgment in health care
On a recent morning, my mentor, a retired breast cancer surgeon in his 70s, sent me a screenshot from his Apple Watch.
10,208 steps.
7.25 kilometers.
One flight of stairs.
Before lunch.
For him, it was just another day. For me, a younger volunteer and PhD student watching Taiwan age into a super-aged society, it was a quiet masterclass in what prevention really means.
This surgeon, Dr. Lin, is not just any retiree. For more than …
10,000 steps before lunch: How a retired doctor models prevention
At some point in their careers, health practitioners find themselves preoccupied with issues that go beyond the confines of the clinical room. Beyond diagnoses and prescriptions lies a larger health care landscape, one shaped by policy, economics, culture, technology, and power. Health professionals then begin to ask how this broader system affects not only their individual patients, but also communities and society at large. It is often at this intersection …
Why health advocacy needs foresight and backcasting tools
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Fertility specialist Oluyemisi Famuyiwa discusses their article “Why carrier screening results are complex.” Oluyemisi explores the transition to “Genetic Carrier Screening 3.0,” a new era where expanded panels reveal hidden complexities that …
Genetic testing requires more than just a binary result [PODCAST]
My father’s last medical bill suggested he might be expecting a child. He was 88 years old. Somewhere in the hospital’s system, common sense had vanished. We found the pregnancy test charge only after paying the bill in full. My mother and I wrote to the hospital. The first reply was warm and procedural: Thank you for contacting us. We will submit this to Revenue Integrity. You should expect a …
How a pregnancy test on a male patient revealed health care flaws
The man sitting across from me is a Titan.
In the taxonomy of the 2026 economy, he is the apex predator: an MD, a CEO, and the chair of multiple boards. He has navigated the post-pandemic attrition and the algorithmic market corrections that swallowed lesser firms. He is wildly, empirically successful.
But recently, he sat across from me, sharing a shade of rage I hadn’t seen before. He had just navigated a …
Beyond burnout: the rise of the optimized, dissociated executive
Medical gaslighting has become a widely discussed concept in health care. The term is often misunderstood as implying intentional dismissal or manipulation by clinicians. In reality, most encounters that patients later describe as gaslighting do not arise from ill intent. They arise from something far more common and far more complex: communication breakdown under system strain.
Understanding medical gaslighting requires examining the clinical encounter from both sides of the stethoscope, not …
How system strain contributes to medical gaslighting in health care
As a nurse, I have been with patients during their first breath and their last. While with grieving families, one statement that stays with me is, “At least now she/he can rest.”
This statement almost always comes from a grieving Black family who lost a family member to a premature death of a preventable or manageable disease. Why must we wait until we are six feet under to rest?
As a Black …
Black women’s health resilience: the hidden cost of “pushing through”
Not long ago in a community intensive care unit (ICU) in a midsized American city, I cared for a sick young woman who had just delivered a baby. Part of the placenta, which is supposed to be fully expelled following delivery, remained in her uterus. This condition, known as “retained products of conception,” provided an opportunity for bacteria to infect the retained tissue. The infection spread from her uterus to …
Why tele-critical care fails the sickest ICU patients
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Professor and coach Kathleen Muldoon discusses their article “Why humanity in medicine requires peace with a spine.” Kathleen explores the dangerous misconception that peace in health care means silence or compliance. The …
True peace in medicine requires courage not silence [PODCAST]
When a correlation between acetaminophen and autism was claimed on the national stage recently, it did more than produce a headline; it signaled a fracture in public trust. Oftentimes dismissed simply as fringe rhetoric, medical misinformation is anything but, having lasting impact on public health outcomes. The same way the U.S. health care system suffers from a paradox between high spending and substandard outcomes, our information ecosystem suffers from high …
Medical misinformation: a fracture in public trust and health outcomes
Light drives human biology. Morning light sets the daily clock. Daylight supports attention, energy, and mood. Evening darkness supports sleep. Modern routines disrupt that rhythm through indoor lighting, screens, night shifts, and rapid travel. Psychiatry sees the costs. Sleep disruption feeds anxiety. Circadian drift worsens depression. Cognitive speed and motivation fall when sleep timing slips. Most recently, screen time has joined circadian disruptors.
Light as a diagnostic tool
Light already powers diagnosis …
How fNIRS and light therapy are shaping precision psychiatry
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while some people learned to bake bread and my family made the dubious choice of adopting a high-anxiety poodle who bites, superstar author Lisa See spotted an unopened book on her shelf about women’s medicine in Imperial China. In a fortuitous chain of discovery, Ms. See stumbled upon the name of Tan Yuxiang, a lady doctor during the Ming Dynasty, who published a book of her …
Difficult patients in medical history
Hospitals are not the only ones who rely on volunteers.
Nonprofits rely on them for aging programs. Faith communities rely on them for spiritual formation. Philanthropy relies on them for legitimacy. Even emerging “wellness” and “compassion training” industries rely on them for content and credibility.
But no one ever asks: Who sustains the sustainers?
For more than 20 years, I have watched hospital volunteers become the invisible infrastructure of modern care. We are …
The emotional labor of volunteering in an aging society
As a family medicine resident physician who practices primary care, it is my responsibility to be the first doctor a patient, their family, and their community may visit for any undifferentiated issue. No other field of medicine increases the life expectancy and the quality of life in a community as much as primary care, which provides more meaning to me than can be qualified. My objective is for people to …
Understanding the evolutionary mismatch in health and modern disease
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Obstetrician-gynecologist Priya Panneerselvam discusses their article “How medicine reflects women’s silence.” Priya discusses how the quiet deference observed in their mother’s generation continues to manifest in patients who apologize for their pain …
Silence is a survival mechanism that costs women their joy [PODCAST]
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