A Guide and a Seeker walk into a bar.
The Seeker says, “I’m so glad I’m here, I’ve been searching far and wide for good beer to slake my thirst, and you, my Guide, have finally brought me here!”
The Guide says, “Ah, I know just the thing. I’ll get you some Dos Equis. A merchant’s representative told me it’s the most interesting beer in the world!”
The Guide tries to order a …
At the end of a clinic visit, the conversation often turns to lifestyle: eat healthier, exercise more, cut back on alcohol, sleep better. Patients nod, agree, and walk out the door.
And too often, little changes.
Why does advice that seems so straightforward rarely stick? The answer lies in the gap between medical instruction and human behavior.
The limits of good intentions
Research has shown that simply giving advice is rarely enough. A 2019 …
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Psychiatrist and author Arthur Lazarus discusses his article, “Finding integrity at the end of a career.” Arthur shares the poignant narrative of Dr. Raul Morales, a community internist facing retirement with a …
Medicine remembers data but forgets voices. I learned this between 1999 and 2003, when I was quietly fired and branded as someone who had “burned too many bridges.” That label was projection, not a critique of my science. My work within the national research network remains foundational to current clinical guidelines, and my training-grant application ranked near the top of all those submitted. Yet the whisper of “bridge-burning” became the …
Starting my training as an MD/PhD student at Yale, I expected long nights of memorizing biochemical pathways and drug mechanisms. I predicted challenging times learning how to care for patients in tough situations. But what I didn’t expect was just how difficult the current federal landscape would make this journey.
I felt this directly in early 2025. I came to Yale to study the health of LGBTQ+ populations. But when my …
Kidney stone disease remains one of the most common and painful conditions in urology, affecting millions worldwide each year. Global data show a continued rise in incidence (more than 100 million new cases in 2021) making prevention and long-term management a priority for both clinicians and patients. Despite significant advances in minimally invasive treatment, many patients still ask a familiar question: “Is there a natural remedy that can help …
Across conferences and journals worldwide, we repeat the same aspiration: Health care must shift from treating disease to promoting health. Yet most systems (regardless of country) remain architected around illness. Buildings, budgets, and workflows are still optimized for what happens after the body breaks down.
My perspective changed after speaking with a senior health care leader in Asia. He did not begin by discussing surgical innovation, emergency demands, or reimbursement challenges. …
The recent federal conviction of Done Global’s CEO, Ruthia He, and its clinical president, psychiatrist David Brody, on November 20, 2025, has brought long-standing concerns about virtual ADHD prescribing into undeniable focus. A San Francisco jury found both executives guilty of conspiring to distribute Adderall and other Schedule II stimulants, along with health care fraud and (for He) obstruction of justice. According to the Department of Justice, Done Global generated …
If you’re managing metabolic disease for your patients, you’re also dealing with liver disease, whether you realize it or not. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) affects up to 70 percent of patients who have type 2 diabetes or obesity, yet reliable, routine screening for liver disease is anything but commonplace.
I often wonder why that is. After all, the liver is arguably the most sensitive barometer of metabolic dysfunction, …
I’m not paranoid. And I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. But as a physician who has spent decades watching the pendulum of medical ethics swing back and forth, I can’t ignore the pattern emerging across public health and politics today. Some of what I’m seeing looks uncomfortably familiar. It looks like eugenics, not the caricature of white coats and calipers, but the quieter, policy-driven, values-encoded version that shaped America a …
15 years. That’s how long I’d been building my Facebook presence from grammar school friends to medical school colleagues, from former patients to the professional community I’d cultivated as a medical oncologist. Two years ago, I converted it to a business page to share evidence-based cancer information.
Then scammers stole my identity to sell fake cancer cures, and Facebook banned me while they stayed active.
The impersonation
It started with a message from …
We work in an impossibly depleted health care system and under impossibly high expectations of perfection from society. We hold our peers, our team members, our trainees, and most of all, ourselves to rigid, lofty ideals of flawlessness. By glorifying perfectionism in medicine, we have effectively dehumanized ourselves.
The oath we take is “Do No Harm.” It is not “Try your best to do no harm.” Is it appropriate to expect …
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Health care strategist Dana Y. Lujan discusses her article, “Grief and leadership in health care.” Dana shares her devastating personal story of losing both her son’s father and, six years later, her …
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I check the submission website again. And again. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I find myself refreshing the page, hoping for a small update (a new status, a change in wording, a sign that my manuscript has moved from “under review” to “decision in process”).
For early-career researchers, this waiting game is familiar. We pour months, sometimes years, of effort into designing a study, collecting data, writing, revising, and …
Busy physicians seldom pause long enough to feel the weight or the wisdom of the year behind them.
We know the end of the year is approaching not because we’ve reflected, but because holiday coverage discussions have begun. Someone needs to work Thanksgiving. Someone has to take Christmas. Someone will miss the department party again.
You look at the schedule and realize: This year, it’s you.
And in that moment, something inside you …
As an oncologist, I’ve sat through the 24- to 48-hour EMR trainings that claim to prepare clinicians for new systems. They rarely do. The average physician still spends one to two days in technical onboarding and another month fumbling through screens before feeling comfortable. Versions vary wildly even within the same vendor, and every move to a new hospital resets the learning curve.
One night in a rural hospital, I watched …
As a pediatric gastroenterologist with more than 10 years of face-to-face clinical experience, I can recall countless stories of parents who felt lost at sea, adrift between vague diagnoses, inconclusive tests, and unanswered questions. Medicine has its boundaries; doctors can only work within what is known. And while artificial intelligence now helps us digest vast amounts of medical data, nothing can replace the curiosity and determination of parents who take …
The story of gastroenterology in 2025 is no longer about productivity or reimbursement; it’s about manpower. Hospitals and practices across the U.S. are struggling to recruit, retain, or even temporarily staff the specialists who manage digestive diseases, perform colon cancer screening, and handle emergency procedures like ERCP. What we’re facing isn’t simply a staffing issue; it’s a structural shortage decades in the making.
The shrinking pipeline of gastroenterologists
In the mid-1990s, roughly …
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
When I lost meaning in and for my life while questioning my career path as a surgical resident, I lost motivation to eat and isolated in guilt and shame. Looking back, I had given up the very things that I now realize give life meaning in the pursuit of my career: relationships (including friendship and community …
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Oncologist and health care executive Yousuf Zafar discusses his article, “When cancer costs too much: Why financial toxicity deserves a place in clinical conversations.” Yousuf explains the concept of “financial toxicity,” a …
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