Can peer review in academia survive faculty overload?

Medical Education
May 28, 2026

One of the most difficult moments in scholarship is deciding when a piece of work is ready to leave the desk of the author and enter the public domain. Peer review continues to rely almost entirely on voluntary scholarly labor, even as the academic environment supporting it becomes increasingly strained.

Over the past several years, many faculty in higher education in the United States, whether at public or private institutions, have …

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Can peer review in academia survive faculty overload?

3 fixes for primary care access in the ChatGPT era

Health Technology
May 28, 2026

A new patient in her 40s recently walked into one of our clinics with a printout of a ChatGPT conversation. For three days, she had been typing her symptoms into the chatbot, describing chest tightness and a fatigue that was not going away, asking whether she should be worried.

The reason she turned to AI was straightforward. She had tried to schedule a primary care appointment with her previous provider and …

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3 fixes for primary care access in the ChatGPT era

School nursing for medically complex kids is not guaranteed

Conditions and Diseases
May 28, 2026

We didn’t know that school districts have the power to ignore medical decisions made by doctors for medically complex children. We found out when we switched districts, assuming our son’s complex care would follow him the way it always had. It hadn’t been an issue before. His home care nurses went to school with him, and his needs were consistently supported. Our new district was one of the strongest and …

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School nursing for medically complex kids is not guaranteed

Communication access is a patient safety issue

Conditions and Diseases
May 28, 2026

Imagine nearly dying while being unable to communicate your health needs, and the important medical decision-making doesn’t involve you. All that is left for you to do is to feel frustrated, helpless, and afraid.

I had such an experience at the height of the pandemic when I contracted COVID-19 and landed in the intensive care unit. I was put on a ventilator and then on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the highest form …

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Communication access is a patient safety issue

Psychedelics and neuroplasticity are rewiring the brain

Conditions and Diseases
May 28, 2026

For most of my career as a neurosurgeon, I’ve worked under a cold, hard assumption: The brain’s wiring, once trashed or locked into a pathological rut, is remarkably stubborn. We can resect a tumor, clip an aneurysm, or untether a nerve, but the deeper circuits driving depression, PTSD, and trauma often laugh at our scalpels and stay stubbornly resistant to standard medications. For decades, the standard fix for PTSD or …

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Psychedelics and neuroplasticity are rewiring the brain

Why physicians make the best health care investors

Physician Finance
May 28, 2026

She was 42, uninsured, and had been avoiding the doctor for three years. By the time she showed up in my hospital, her diabetes was uncontrolled, her blood pressure was dangerously elevated, and she had early signs of kidney disease. Everything about her case was preventable. She knew it. I knew it. And neither of us could do much about the system that made it happen.

I was an inpatient hospitalist …

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Why physicians make the best health care investors

The balloon catheter bleeding risk no one talks about

Conditions and Diseases
May 28, 2026

For the longest time, indwelling balloon catheters have been the norm in the care of ICU patients. They are often used to help nursing staff keep high-acuity patients clean, manage fecal incontinence, and curb breakdown of skin. Initially, they have been seen to be a useful and reliable solution for problems related to fecal incontinence (FI).

But in oncology ICUs, their use brings up an important question that is overlooked: Are …

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The balloon catheter bleeding risk no one talks about

After Match Day, orthopedic surgery is finally open to every kind of surgeon [PODCAST]

Podcast
May 27, 2026
YouTube video

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

When you open your Match Day envelope, you step into an orthopedic surgery field that looks nothing like it used to. John E. Klibanoff, an orthopedic surgeon, discusses his article “Navigating your …

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After Match Day, orthopedic surgery is finally open to every kind of surgeon [PODCAST]

The quiet shift that changes physician decision making

Physician
May 27, 2026

There is a subtle but profound shift that happens when your identity changes.

Not the kind of shift that comes with a new title or role, but the kind that is forced. The kind that emerges when something foundational is altered, and the assumptions you once relied on no longer hold in the same way.

For physicians, identity is often tightly interwoven with decision-making. We are trained to trust our judgment, to …

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The quiet shift that changes physician decision making

Interventional pain procedures for chronic back pain

Conditions and Diseases
May 27, 2026

Chronic back, leg, and pelvic pain frequently result from degenerative spine conditions, disc herniations, spinal stenosis, facet arthropathy, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, or vertebrogenic pain. When conservative measures such as physical therapy, medications, and activity modification fail, interventional pain procedures provide targeted, minimally invasive options to address specific pain generators.

These techniques are typically performed on an outpatient basis with image guidance, offering shorter recovery times and lower risk compared to open …

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Interventional pain procedures for chronic back pain

5 principles for protecting physician reputation

Conditions and Diseases
May 27, 2026

Health care workers understand the power of a record.

One sentence in a medical chart can follow a patient for years. A diagnosis, a risk label, or a preliminary impression may shape how future clinicians see that person. That is why we are taught to document carefully, update records when new information appears, and avoid turning uncertainty into a permanent label.

Public institutions should follow the same principle. When a state medical …

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5 principles for protecting physician reputation

Profit motive in medicine: lessons from private detention

Physician
May 27, 2026

Who staffs the immigration detention centers, the temporary holding camps, the privately run facilities where thousands of frightened people are waiting behind fences and concrete walls?

That is not a rhetorical question. It is a practical one. There are doctors, nurses, administrators, guards, transportation workers, and contractors working inside these institutions today. Some believe they are helping under difficult circumstances. Others regard it as employment within a structure that continues because …

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Profit motive in medicine: lessons from private detention

The quiet art of building trust with patients in pain

Conditions and Diseases
May 27, 2026

Before I ever stepped into a clinic, I learned diplomacy at the dinner table. I learned how silence could be strategic. How tone traveled faster than words. How disagreements could unfold without becoming rupture. How laughter, timed well, could soften a room. I watched adults negotiate boundaries, expectations, and emotions in real time and internalized something I would not be able to name for years: authority is not volume. It …

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The quiet art of building trust with patients in pain

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RFK’s food pyramid is a win for industry, not health

Health Policy
May 27, 2026

When Robert Kennedy Jr. (RFK) was confirmed as HHS director last February, overseeing the CDC, NIH, CMS, and FDA, many worried that modern medicines would become unavailable or scarce.

Instead, industry has received unexpected windfalls and green lights from the new policies. Exhibit A: the exoneration of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) from its well-documented links to cancer and cardiovascular effects. The “timing theories” at Wake Forest that helped turn HRT on …

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RFK’s food pyramid is a win for industry, not health

35 years after choosing psychiatry as a specialty

Physician
May 27, 2026

35 years ago, I stood in a hospital hallway and made a decision that would define the rest of my professional life. I was halfway through my internship year in radiation oncology, a field of high-tech linear accelerators and clear-cut protocols, but my heart had drifted toward psychiatry. When I finally voiced my intent to switch, I didn’t find the collegial support we are taught to value in medical training. …

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35 years after choosing psychiatry as a specialty

The physician gender pay gap is an engineering problem

Physician
May 27, 2026

The physician gender pay gap persists after adjustment for specialty, hours, and productivity. A 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine found female physicians earned roughly $20,000 less per year than male counterparts after extensive controls. Subsequent analyses confirm similar patterns across specialties and career stages. Most of this literature treats the gap as evidence of discrimination. That framing identifies the problem but offers no mechanism and few remedies.

This …

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The physician gender pay gap is an engineering problem

When a code blue on the psychiatry unit ends in a police interview [PODCAST]

Podcast
May 26, 2026
YouTube video

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

You hear code blues overhead in a hospital all the time, but one on a psychiatry unit is different. A young patient died after a cardiac event, and what followed looked nothing like …

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When a code blue on the psychiatry unit ends in a police interview [PODCAST]

The hidden cost of GLP-1 insurance coverage mandates

Medications
May 26, 2026

I have spent years caring for patients with obesity, and one of the most meaningful parts of this work is seeing what happens when people finally receive comprehensive, evidence-based treatment. I have watched sleep apnea disappear, blood pressure normalize, joint pain ease, and liver disease reverse. I have watched people who spent years feeling dismissed by the health care system finally start to feel healthy and hopeful again. Those outcomes …

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The hidden cost of GLP-1 insurance coverage mandates

Social determinants of health belong in medical school

Medical Education
May 26, 2026

There is so much going on in the world right now, which is precisely why I want to talk about a TV show.

Not for escapism. Because this particular show is doing something that medical schools across the country are now being required to stop doing.

The Pitt won Outstanding Drama Series at the 2025 Emmys. Season 2 just aired its finale. Season 3 is already confirmed. And if …

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Social determinants of health belong in medical school

Mission over margin: a community ER doctor’s discipline

Physician
May 26, 2026

The May 2, 2026, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Perspective, “From Mission to Margin in Academic Medicine,” articulates an internal struggle I feel frequently. All physicians recognize the formative environment Dr. Vyas describes as something that must be fiercely protected, and his call to action against the commodification of training resonates deeply. As an emergency department physician practicing outside of this setting, I recognize that when we succumb …

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Mission over margin: a community ER doctor’s discipline

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