Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Primary care physician Jerina Gani discusses their article “The hidden rewards of a primary care career.” Jerina challenges the common narrative that general practice is merely a stepping stone filled with paperwork …
Medicine prides itself on early diagnosis and decisive treatment. We are trained to recognize patterns, apply categories, and follow pathways designed to reduce uncertainty. This approach saves lives. But there is a quiet point at which it can also cause harm.
That moment occurs when diagnosis becomes closure.
I recently spoke with a young woman in her 20s with endometriosis. She had done everything medicine asked of her: sought care, underwent surgery, …
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Physical therapists Ziya Altug and Shirish Sachdeva discuss their article “Why your clinic waiting room may affect patient outcomes.” Ziya and Shirish explore how the ambiance of a medical office significantly impacts …
Let’s talk about physician wellness.
Not the version that looks good in press releases or PowerPoint slides. I am talking about the lived, messy, heart-and-body version of wellness, the one that actually matters.
Because somewhere between the lavender oil diffusers and the “wellness committees,” the real meaning of physician well-being got lost. It has become a buzzword, something hospitals display proudly on banners and conference agendas, as if saying the word “wellness” …
Picture a “No Entry” sign or a speed limit. A simple red circle needs no translation for a driver in Tokyo, Tehran, or Toronto. That’s more than just convenience; it’s a global safety net.
But in health care, where a misunderstanding can be deadly, our communication hasn’t kept up. We still rely overwhelmingly on words, pages of dense text handed to patients who are stressed, exhausted, older, or struggling with a …
The years pass without ceremony.
They do not always announce themselves.
Sometimes they slip by like quiet weather,
like afternoons we cannot later recall
except by the way the light
once rested against a wall.
Time moves like autumn wind,
unannounced,
persistent,
tender in its own indifferent way.
A milkweed stands in a field,
having grown tall without noticing
the exact moment it became mature.
Its green has deepened,
its stem stiffened with understanding.
Now the wind arrives,
and the pods open
not in grief,
but in readiness.
Each …
In recent years, medicine has become more open about burnout, workforce shortages, and the challenges facing women in health care leadership. We write about mentorship programs, leadership pipelines, and the need to bring more women into ownership and executive roles. We celebrate women who build clinics, lead departments, and create space for others to rise.
What we talk about far less is what happens when women actually meet each other in …
I have the great honor and privilege of coaching medical students throughout their training. In the past week, several students have shared experiences that have stayed with me: On clinical rotations, some shared stories of being referred to only as “student one” or “student two,” their humanity quietly erased. Others described managing food and housing insecurity while carrying the financial burden of medical education. Still others, particularly students with darker …
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Physician, former health care executive, certified coach, speaker, and organizational consultant Laura Suttin discusses her article “Why the 4 a.m. wake-up call isn’t for everyone.” Laura shares her personal struggle with the …
I used to think medicine would change me by adding things. Knowledge. Confidence. Authority. Certainty. I assumed growth would look like accumulation, more skills, more answers, more control. What actually happened was the opposite. Medicine changed me by subtraction.
When I started writing as a medical student, everything felt sharp and exposed. The hospital was loud, inefficient, and often cruel in ways no one named out loud. I wrote about scut …
Elevance Health recently reported that it expects to lose more than 180,000 fully insured group plan enrollees in 2026, with its CFO describing the strategy as “prioritizing disciplined pricing and margin integrity over volume.” UnitedHealth has made similar statements. Both are effectively walking away from the fully insured employer market, where administrative complexity no longer justifies the economics.
At the same time, private equity is pouring capital into …
Dr. Andrea Love wrote about the lack of basic scientific knowledge among the public, noting that only about 28 percent of people possess it. She highlighted the consequences of this, emphasizing how it can negatively affect people’s decisions and lives.
Many of the articles I have written have dealt with scientific knowledge in one form or another. My comments on the FDA and drug approvals, Alzheimer’s and cancer screening blood tests, …
In 1983, The Outsiders featured Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and, augmented by Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic genius, it planted a seed, one I was unaware of at the time.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can …
ADVERTISEMENT
For the past few weeks, I’ve been rotating through pediatrics. In the emergency room, I met a little boy I’ll call Ian.
Ian was wary of everyone who came close to him, especially anyone holding a stethoscope or thermometer. Sometimes all it took was the way you raised your hand, or a glance toward his neck, for him to retreat behind invisible walls. He was only about a year and a …
You know the real flex in life is to be able to stretch out like a cat on a random Tuesday and not worry about bills or appointments or being anywhere.
I think there’s something truly to be said about time freedom (and not only time freedom, but freedom of self) where we can let go of the guilt and shame and all these things that hustle culture has ingrained in …
Patient frustration is something many of us carry home at the end of the day. Much of that frustration, however, isn’t personal; it’s structural.
Many patients don’t realize that different primary care models are designed to deliver fundamentally different experiences. They expect concierge-level access and time within insurance-based practices. They want same-day appointments, unhurried visits, and immediate physician availability, regardless of the model they’re in. And when we can’t deliver what …
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Internal medicine and functional medicine physician Shiv K. Goel discusses his article “Mind-body connection in chronic disease: Why traditional medicine falls short.” Shiv explores the limitations of conventional medical models that focus …
Let me start with a truth many of us sense long before we ever speak it aloud. We whisper it to ourselves on post-call mornings. We feel it in the drive home after another shift that took more than it gave. We carry it into our kitchens, into our bedrooms, and into the quiet moments where no pager or EMR alert can compete with what’s happening inside us.
The elephant in …
A patient with diabetes, hypertension, and obesity comes in for her annual wellness visit. The physician has already spent 20 minutes on chronic disease management and lifestyle guidance. As the visit wraps up, the patient mentions daily heart palpitations that started a month ago.
The exam was benign. The physician has two choices: spend another 20 minutes performing an EKG, discussing differential diagnoses, and developing a workup plan; or refer to …
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 …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
