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When did volunteering stop being a choice and start being a condition of professionalism? Pediatrician, certified coach, and mindfulness and yoga teacher Jessie Mahoney realized she had donated over 2,000 hours of uncompensated …
She donated 2,000 hours of unpaid labor before she even noticed [PODCAST]
Long before I stood on collapsing bridges between DBP and NDD, I was the 1977 kid who intentionally derailed Bobby Jr.’s grand “seed money” scheme for free home heating oil for the poor, not out of mischief, but because there was no plan behind it. It was a hallucinogenic vision dressed up as strategy, with no capability for realization. Even then, I could not pretend something workable existed when it …
Bridging the gap in neurodevelopmental care and pediatrics
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 …
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how health care organizations support clinicians and, ultimately, how they care for patients. That transformation, however, is unfolding along two very different paths at the point of care.
In one model, adoption is clinician-driven. Tools are downloaded, tested, and incorporated into daily practice without formal enterprise involvement. This organic uptake often reflects real clinical need, especially in environments defined by time pressure and cognitive overload. But it …
4 questions to ask about enterprise AI drug dosing
In the golden days of practicing medicine, the hospitals’ boards were composed of community leaders acting on behalf of the hospitals to raise funds, negotiate insurance contracts, screen and supervise the performance of the key employees, and interact with the government. They used their passion and influence to facilitate the delivery of health care to the communities they served. Most of these board members were volunteers or philanthropists. A few …
How corporate health care ruined the medical profession
In 2023, I was in a serious motor vehicle collision. The injury that followed, a vertebral artery dissection, required real recovery. I did the work and thought I had come out the other side. I was looking forward to celebrating my three-year anniversary since the accident. I was feeling grateful. I was not expecting what came next.
The bike
I love spinning. The bike was the first thing I reclaimed after the …
A physician’s journey with a hidden CSF leak and delayed diagnosis
Despite the emergence of new pharmacologic alternatives to traditional bariatric surgery, the global obesity epidemic continues to escalate. Semaglutides, while effective for some, are costly, require weekly injections, and often cause side effects that lead many patients to discontinue treatment and subsequently regain much or all the weight they lost. Both bypass and restrictive bariatric procedures carry significant risks, side effects, and long-term lifestyle adjustments, and most patients ultimately reach …
Bariatric surgery vs. semaglutides vs. endoscopic visceral lipectomy
It was March 9, 2026. I remember the moment vividly. I woke up with a mix of excitement and hope, about to open the email that would determine whether I had matched into residency. Deep down, I believed I had done everything right. During my external rotations, I gave more than 100 percent. If I was asked for one thing, I delivered two, and I made sure they were done …
Failing the residency match: What I learned from not matching
“What is that?” I was sitting in the emergency room during my emergency medicine rotation, chatting with my attending when he had asked me what residency program I was in. I told him I was actually doing two: family medicine and preventive medicine. Family medicine he had heard of, but preventive medicine? Only a confused look. And he is not the only one. In medical school, there was no specialty …
Why the U.S. needs more preventive medicine and public health doctors
One of the most damaging patterns in health care is also one of the most accepted: delayed diagnosis.
What stays with me is not only the diagnosis that came too late. It is everything that happened before it. The months. Sometimes the years. The symptoms that were minimized, misread, or explained away. The patient who was still struggling, but without enough clarity to move care forward. The family trying to function …
The hidden costs of delayed diagnosis and diagnostic ambiguity
As physicians who regularly work with pediatric patients, and experts in counter-terrorism, we know firsthand the dangers that online radicalization poses to youth. Nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), which glorifies violence for the sake of violence, is on the rise globally. Many of these decentralized online networks, such as the 764 Network, specifically target children for recruitment. 764 has seen a sharp increase in popularity, and has become the …
The true crime community is radicalizing kids online
Once the lockdowns from COVID-19 began, a new normal of distrusting America’s public health officials started. Dr. Anthony Fauci quickly became the most famous and controversial physician in America. At the start of the pandemic, having the responsibility of communicating information and data with the entire country, his advice was trusted by most Americans; a Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that in December 2020, 90 percent of Democrats and …
Why the doctor-patient relationship survives when trust in public health fails
An excerpt from The DNA of a Doctor: How Upbringing, Culture, and Unbridled Ambition Curates Achievement.
Having the support of male colleagues and mentors was not new to me. I could not have gotten through plastic surgery residency without my male co-residents. Being the only woman in my class and the classes I was sandwiched between could be daunting. My male co-residents were a blessing, they looked after me, and …
Navigating medical training and residency as a female plastic surgeon
Recently, my mother was told by her doctors that her high blood pressure was a concern and that she needed to make dietary changes and eat foods lower in sodium. Seemed simple. To my mother, what was clear was the need for significant dietary change to stay below 2,300 mg of sodium, the recommended limit by the American Heart Association. Sure, she would make sure to not eat food overpowered …
Why cooking for better health makes dietary changes easier
Technology can be intimidating, especially when you do not fully understand how it works. There is also a fear that technology will start taking over and people will lose their jobs. I was one of those people who feared technology, and I kept hearing how artificial intelligence (AI) would take over health care jobs and replace certain roles. I was dead-set against AI being used in health care because I …
Overcoming the fear of health care AI in data abstraction
When asked by the surgery department chair as a medical student why I wanted to treat vascular patients, my response was to be useful, useful to people with a challenging systemic disease that often results in stroke, amputation, and death. Often, wounds that have not healed for months on a foot or a hand, or persistent leg pain provoked by walking or simply laying in bed are subtle indicators that …
Why local care matters for peripheral arterial disease
Recent federal cuts to how Medicare pays physicians are likely to deliver significant negative consequences to independent medical practices.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) final rule for the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule imposes a dramatic reduction in payment rates for medical services performed in hospital settings by independent clinicians.
The payment reduction fails to account for the true resource costs incurred by independent physician practices, creating an …
Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients
The community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. is living through an unimaginable grief. As we mourn with them, we are right to ask what we can learn from this tragedy.
Much of the public conversation has focused on OpenAI: Why did the company not warn police when its systems flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account for violent content months before the shooting? B.C. Premier Eby noted the company’s silence was “profoundly disturbing” …
The urgent need for AI mental health regulation after Tumbler Ridge
This past weekend, I completed the United Airlines NYC Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile course running across the Brooklyn Bridge, through the streets of New York, through Times Square and Central Park, finally finishing upright and with both shoes still on. In the 48 hours since crossing the line, I have reflected deeply on the experience and arrived at one inescapable conclusion: It was still better than going to work. Please …
13.1 reasons running a half marathon beats practicing medicine
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
What happens when a doctor closes the chart but the patient leaves without understanding what was actually said? Retired surgeon, independent physician, health care consultant, and patient advocate Alan …
His mother-in-law heard “cancer,” went home, and was dead within a year [PODCAST]
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