KevinMD.com

How relationships affect health, seen from the exam room

Physician

June 18, 2026

For the first decade of my medical career, I thought I was treating bodies. By the second decade, I noticed something else. I was usually treating relationships. Patients almost never told me directly.

A woman in her late forties came into my office last year. She had gained 22 pounds in a year, on a routine that had worked for the decade before it. Her labs were normal. Her thyroid was …

Knowing when to stop treatment is medicine’s quiet burden

Beatrice Preti, MD

Physician

June 18, 2026

It was my first ICU call shift as a second-year resident, and my first time holding the code pager, which rested, quiet but not quite forgotten, in my scrub top pocket until around 10 p.m.

The overhead speakers blared to life just as the pager began to beep. I ran to the cardiac ICU, forgetting my carefully organized ACLS cards on my call room desk. The patient was a middle-aged male …

Isolation and suicidal thoughts: the quiet friend

Ronke Lawal, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

June 18, 2026

There is a father somewhere on the internet, grieving his son on camera, doing the brave and devastating work of converting his loss into warning signs for someone else’s child. He lists them carefully: if someone tidy becomes constantly disorganized, if nothing excites them anymore, if the texture of their daily life has quietly collapsed, please speak to someone, get professional help.

The comments beneath the video tell you everything about …

Merit in medical school admissions is more than scores

Tony L. Weaver, DO

Medical Education

June 18, 2026

Every physician begins as a traveler.

Before the white coat, before the title, before the privilege of caring for patients, we are all aspiring travelers trying to reach the same destination: competence, wisdom, clinical excellence, and the ability to serve human beings in their most vulnerable moments. Some begin that journey on well-paved roads, guided by physicians in the family, excellent schools, professional mentors, and the financial freedom to prepare without …

What home hospice care gave us in her final days

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

June 18, 2026

My wife and companion of nearly 50 years is dead. She used to say that when I was home, the house was pretty quiet. As a health care educator and patient advocate, much of my time was spent at my computer in my study. But on the rare occasions when I traveled for work, the house was “too quiet” for her. If I didn’t before, I would understand what she …

Domestic violence medical training is failing survivors

Carlin Lockwood

Conditions and Diseases

June 18, 2026

This April, I had the privilege of taking an elective at my medical school entitled “Empowering Clinicians-in-Training to Address Domestic Violence.” Through sessions led by physicians, community leaders, survivor advocates, and survivors, my classmates and I learned how to leverage our role as soon-to-be physicians to identify, support, and advocate for survivors of domestic violence.

Not even a week after the course ended, national headlines announced the death of Dr. …

What’s actually behind medical students using AI [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 17, 2026

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

Medical students who skip writing their own reflections are not lazy, they are surviving an irrational system. Kathleen Muldoon, a coach and professor, returns to discuss what student AI use in medical education actually reveals about the curriculum, the hidden incentives behind …

Oncology grief is the price of caring deeply for patients

Rachel Jin, MD

Physician

June 17, 2026

Every day, I am invited into the most intimate and vulnerable chapters of another person’s life. Chapters no one ever plans for, marked by fear, grief, courage, and extraordinary love.

I have sat across from a 64-year-old man newly diagnosed with prostate cancer and watched tears fall from his eyes for the first time in over a decade. I have seen trembling hands of a young woman reach instinctively for her …

Physicians and natural disasters: the fifth season

American College of Physicians

Physician

June 17, 2026

As our calendars roll forward into the month of June, the summer season brings thoughts of family vacations, graduation ceremonies, and outdoor gatherings to many. But for me and others along the Gulf Coast, June 1 carries added meaning as …

AI in health care is a mirror, not a therapist

Matt Hasan, PhD

Health Technology

June 17, 2026

The most unsettling thing about artificial intelligence is not what it can do. It is what people feel when they talk to it.

I keep hearing the same things. “It listens.” “It doesn’t rush me.” “It helps me think.” “It seems to care.” Some people say this with embarrassment, as though confessing a weakness. Others say it with relief. A few say it with something close to gratitude.

These reactions have set …

Why the safest medical AI knows when not to answer

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Health Technology

June 17, 2026

When a recent study in Nature Medicine compared general-purpose AI models with specialized clinical tools, the headline was exactly the kind the technology world likes to see: The generalists came out on top.

The reactions were predictable. Some observers treated the study as proof that specialized clinical software is no longer needed, arguing that bigger and more powerful AI models will always win. Others dismissed the study, pointing out that AI …

Statistics are not destiny: a story of hope in oncology

Juan Carden, MD

Physician

June 17, 2026

I arrived at the office early that morning. The hospital still carried that mixture of stale coffee, disinfectant, and human exhaustion that exists only in medical corridors before eight in the morning. When I opened the door to the first examination room, I smiled peacefully. There sat Leon and Ilana. I had known them for so many years that it was impossible to remember when we had stopped addressing each …

Stop screening for chronic disease in silos

Jon Gingrich, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

June 17, 2026

New cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome guidance from the American Heart Association (AHA) reflects an important shift in how health care understands chronic disease.

For years, conditions including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease have often been discussed, managed and measured separately. The newest CKM framework recognizes a different reality: These conditions are deeply interconnected, driven by many of the same underlying metabolic processes and risk factors.

But perhaps …

Weight stigma in health care is a health threat

The Obesity Society

Conditions and Diseases

June 17, 2026

Words matter.

The words we use shape how we see one another, how we treat people, and how individuals see themselves. In health care, language determines whether someone feels respected or judged, supported or dismissed, empowered or ashamed. It directly influences quality of care, health outcomes, and whether a person ever returns to a health care setting. That is why the conversation surrounding obesity must change.

For decades, public discussion of obesity …

When the right end-of-life care is hardest to access

Denise Mohess, MD

Conditions and Diseases

June 17, 2026

The cost of health care in America is extraordinarily high, too often funding the wrong type of care. As a geriatric medicine and palliative care physician, I sit with patients and families making end-of-life decisions, weighing life-prolonging measures, optimizing quality of life, defining what matters most to them.

Recently, a 100-year-old man with severe dementia, limited mobility, hearing impairment, requiring assistance for his daily needs, was admitted to the hospital with …

Detachment is not strength: lessons from dying patients

Aditya Singh, MD

Physician

June 17, 2026

They say a dying man doesn’t lie. But have you ever wondered why?

Is it a sudden surge of enlightenment? A newfound wisdom that only arrives when the clock begins to run out? Or is it something more visceral? The experience of being brought face-to-face with every morally questionable choice, every “snoozed” priority, and every unspoken truth?

Many religions speak of a Judgment Day or a Karma, a moment where we are …

Why leaving medicine for law is rarely about medicine

Michael Geller, JD, MBA, PA

Conditions and Diseases

June 17, 2026

The slogan of my high school was a verse from Proverbs: “Educate a child according to his way, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

I thought about that line a lot in PA school. And again in law school. And again last year, finishing my MBA at the USC Marshall School of Business in my late thirties.

My mother wanted me to be a doctor. Not …

Why most methylene blue cases came from anesthesia, not pills [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 16, 2026

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

Most patients on antidepressants are told they can’t take methylene blue, even for brain fog. Steven E. Warren, a physician and longevity medicine clinician, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article “51 cases that reframe methylene blue serotonin syndrome.” You’ll hear …

Guidelines are not evidence: the research to practice gap

Alissa Goodwin, MD

Physician

June 16, 2026

The patient would come in with a printout.

You know the one. Pulled from a website you’ve never heard of, about a mechanism you weren’t taught in medical school, asking about a test that isn’t in your standard workup. For a long time, my answer was some version of: I’m not familiar with that, the evidence isn’t there, let’s focus on what we know. Which was the honest answer. It was …

When the AI diagnosis arrives before the patient does

Ganesh Asaithambi

Health Technology

June 16, 2026

I will never forget the look on his face. He wasn’t frightened. He wasn’t uncertain. He came into the hospital the way people used to come into courtrooms: with evidence already assembled, a verdict already reached, and very little interest in hearing otherwise. He had consulted an AI program before arriving, which had given him a diagnosis. He had read it, believed it, and arrived not as a patient seeking …

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