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Family physician, medical device inventor, and health care entrepreneur Tod Stillson discusses the article “AI governance in health care: Why physicians must lead the design.” Tod warns that the greatest threat to …
Why physicians must lead the design of artificial intelligence in health care [PODCAST]
In an increasingly globalized world, pathogens travel faster than ever before. Commercial aviation connects remote villages to major metropolitan hubs in less than a day. Supply chains stretch across continents. Climate change is expanding the geographic range of disease-carrying animals and insects. Against this backdrop, the decision by the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) is not merely short-sighted, it is strategically misguided and frankly dangerous.
Global …
Global health security and WHO: Why U.S. withdrawal is dangerous
Sleep is a commonly overlooked aspect of women’s health, yet its absence is quietly taking a toll on millions of lives. Caregiving responsibilities, hormonal shifts, and the relentless mental load of modern life leave women uniquely vulnerable to poor sleep. For many women, poor sleep and feeling tired is seen as normal or expected. Cultural and clinical stigmas often discourage women from seeking help, with many being told …
Why women’s sleep struggles are often dismissed, misdiagnosed, or overshadowed
Health care initiatives will not succeed on policy language alone. They must work in patients’ daily lives. That means helping patients take medications correctly, monitor symptoms early, comply with treatment plans, recover safely after procedures, and stay engaged in long-term behavior change. Persuasive technologies are designed to help people adopt and keep using digital or other products. The best persuasive technologies for modern or value-based health care are not the …
Using persuasive technologies in value-based health care
Previously, I urged readers to use the internet for information about health conditions, medications, and other medical concerns to help make informed decisions about their care. I must modify this based on an online search experience I had that yielded mostly garbage. If I had not known what to seek, I would have been confused, ended my search prematurely, as I expect most people would have, and learned nothing.
To simplify …
How to find reliable online health information and avoid medical misinformation
For much of modern American medicine, we operated with an unspoken assumption: Resources would expand to meet demand. If complexity grew, we added specialists. If volume increased, we built. If margins tightened, we layered new reimbursement strategies. That operating model now feels more like an illusion.
Workforce shortages, supply chain instability, climate disruption, and rising costs have made constraint structural rather than episodic. We are practicing in a globally interdependent system …
Overcoming resource constraints in American medicine
Perhaps the time has arrived to view the clinical practice of medicine differently. The practitioners are now broadly identified either as primary care providers or specialists. Specialty care is more easily defined, but whether such care is used appropriately is another question.
Primary care now includes pediatrics, internal medicine, and family practice with an increasing number of physician extenders, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Primary care has transitioned into something quite …
Why we need a new medical specialty to fix corporate medicine
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Pediatric hematology-oncology physician and co-founder of Pink Coat, MD Tammie Chang discusses the article “Unhooking from the ego in medicine.” Tammie shares her personal journey through depression and clinical burnout, explaining how …
Finding peace by unhooking from ego and achieving a loving presence in medicine [PODCAST]
When actor John Davidson, who has Tourette’s syndrome, reportedly uttered a racial slur during the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) ceremony, the public reaction was swift and emotionally charged. For many people, the involuntary outburst reflected true feelings or a subconscious racial bias. However, that is not the case with certain forms of Tourette’s.
Coprolalia, the involuntary expression of socially inappropriate or taboo words, is among the most …
Coprolalia and Tourette syndrome: Understanding involuntary vocal tics
I have sat in a lot of rooms where smart, well-meaning people puzzle over why American medicine keeps producing the same outcomes: Too few doctors in too many places, primary care is underfunded, and rural hospitals are consistently closing. The answer, frustrating as it is, comes down to a single systems principle: Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. By that standard, we should not be …
How medical education debt drives the physician shortage
I have watched the scope-of-practice debate for decades, from call rooms and crowded wards, from intensive care units and emergency departments, and from the deafening quiet that follows a code well run yet not won.
Early in my career, I argued the way many physicians do, with outcome data and workforce projections. Over time, I came to see that those arguments skirt the deeper question: When clinical authority expands, does accountability …
The hidden costs of diffuse accountability in medical teams
The white coat has always been a symbol of a sacred trust, a commitment to “do no harm.” But as we approach Doctor’s Day 2026, many of us find ourselves grappling with a different kind of harm. It is not a physical wound, nor is it the “burnout” often cited in corporate wellness modules. It is the moral injury of us.
In our daily practice, we increasingly find ourselves at the …
Overcoming moral injury in medicine: a Doctor’s Day reflection
You stood in the quiet spaces
where fear gathers its weight,
in exam rooms humming with doubt,
in moments when breath was forced
and time seemed unwilling
to promise tomorrow.
You were there.
Not only with stethoscope and chart,
not only with the knowledge of medicine,
but with something far rarer:
a presence that did not rush,
a listening that did not measure itself
against the ticking of a clock.
I remember how you listened to the story,
as if each word mattered,
because to …
A poem of gratitude for narrative medicine on Doctor’s Day
When I think about the defining trait physicians have, it is perseverance. Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. We work hard to get into medical school. If you do not get accepted the first time, you double down. You apply to more schools, take a course for the MCAT, brush up on interview skills, and pad your resume with more research. You explore less traditional …
Why resilience is not the cure for physician burnout
An excerpt from The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life by Majid Fotuhi. Copyright © 2026 by Majid Fotuhi. From Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Your brain is constantly changing. While the primary structures remain the same, you can grow and shrink your cortex and hippocampus according to what you do. But what about genetics? You …
Understanding methylation, BDNF, and the ApoE Alzheimer’s gene
If you are a child of the 1960s, chances are your mother or grandmother made some of your clothes from scratch. They would go to a fabric store, look through the hundreds of small packets of printed sewing patterns, and select their next project. The patterns were sheets of thin tissue paper containing outlines of how the fabric should be cut, with instructions on how to piece them together. My …
Finding meaning in medicine: Reconnecting with your childhood calling
Artificial intelligence talks with a voice that is fluent, confident, and increasingly human-like. For clinicians, that voice is both promising and worrisome. It can summarize charts, draft notes, and answer questions with remarkable speed. But it can also do something equally slick yet potentially dangerous: It can agree, virtually all the time.
At first glance, agreement seems harmless. Even helpful. But a growing body of evidence suggests that this tendency, known …
How artificial intelligence sycophancy distorts clinical decision-making
Nationwide, 200,000 lawsuits are filed per year. Among them are between 66,000 and 85,000 medical malpractice cases; however, this number is uncertain. Between 22,000 and 44,000 of these culminate favorably for the plaintiff as a settlement or a verdict. The remainder, two-thirds of all malpractice claims, are dropped or otherwise end favorably for the defendant. These statistics suggest that many medical malpractice claims are frivolous yet are still represented, and …
The dysfunctional medical malpractice marketplace and tort reform
A patient comes in with hip pain. It is not dramatic hip pain. There is no trauma and no fall. It is just a gradual ache that now wakes her up at night. She cannot sit comfortably. Getting in and out of the car is harder, and she is worried. The X-ray is normal. Now what?
In another era, this is where medicine began, not ended. It began with history, examination, …
The cost of time constraints in primary care: Why doctors feel rushed
Many doctors hear “the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” and assume the subject belongs to diplomats, ministers, and development agencies. It does not. Doctors advance the Sustainable Development Goals every day, often without naming them. The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda includes 17 goals designed as an integrated framework for human well-being, equity, prosperity, sustainability, and partnership. They are meant to work together, not in silos. That matters because health does …
Medicine and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
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