Conditions

How collaboration saved my life from a rare disease doctors couldn’t diagnose

Conditions
May 11, 2025

So what exactly does collaborative health care mean? When we break this down into categories, there are three main approaches, each with a different benefit but ideally sharing the same end goal: to better improve patient outcomes. First, doctor to alternative practitioner. Secondly, patient to doctor. Lastly, patient to patient.

Years ago, I went through one of the biggest health battles of my life after being diagnosed with granulomatous mastitis (GM). …

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Why your emotions are your greatest compass in therapy and life

Conditions
May 10, 2025

In his book Ways of Attending, McGilchrist (2016) discusses a difference in attention—one that seeks organization and one that any attempt at organizing subverts. A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, just by looking, it is disturbed. In differing translations of Tranströmer’s poem Prelude from 17 Dikter (1954), about the moment upon wakening from a dream, he captures the infinite possibility that slides one fully awake into a new day, and which …

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Patients are not waiting: What MCDA twin parents teach us about shared decision-making

Conditions
May 10, 2025

Monochorionic diamniotic (MCDA) twin pregnancies come with more scans, more risk, and more decisions to make in very little time. Parents are expected to absorb complex medical information, navigate unfamiliar terminology, and act quickly, often under pressure. When care teams do not meet that need for clarity and support, parents do what any reasonable person would do.

They go looking for answers.

In 2024, we published a study in Midwifery that explored …

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Health workers deserve care too: How to protect their mental health

Conditions
May 9, 2025

Kim Downey:

A friend shared with me how she told someone their mutual physician was on medical leave. She heard it was serious. That person’s immediate response was concern over how it would affect their upcoming appointment. My friend said she thought of my advocacy work, initiating a conversation fostering empathy for the struggling physician.

I read a post by a surgeon, with fellow doctors commenting …

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Why the words doctors use matter more than they think

Conditions
May 8, 2025

I recently attended a medical conference for the Huntington’s disease (HD) community. Hundreds of people were gathered to collaborate, share knowledge, and learn how to better address the needs of their patients. During the first session, I found it challenging to listen to the presentation and the conversations taking place around me. The detached manner in which people were speaking was troubling to me, so I stepped out for a …

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How AI helped me reclaim my creative mind with ADHD

Conditions
May 6, 2025

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand and tame my own mind.

I meditate—have for years. I journal. I go to therapy. I’ve devoted years of my life to endurance sports to “get out of my head,” I even lived at a yoga ashram. I’ve done the work, or at least, a lot of it. I don’t think I’m unfamiliar with introspection or emotional hygiene.

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When asking one more question can change everything

Conditions
May 5, 2025

She looked relatively healthy. Middle-aged, calm, composed. She had tried everything—until she hadn’t. That’s how she found herself on the OR schedule for a hysterectomy.

Years of irregular, heavy bleeding had led her here. She didn’t want surgery, but she was tired. Tired of bleeding, tired of not being heard, tired of grasping for answers. This was the final option, or so it seemed.

But then, just before the surgery, a resident …

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A doctor’s emotional struggle with a young leukemia patient

Conditions
May 3, 2025

I am currently working as a senior registrar in the oncology unit of a trust hospital. We admit both oncology and hematology patients in the same ward, meaning we care for patients with solid tumors as well as those with blood cancers. Our hospital has only one oncology ward, which has ten beds. Since it is a trust hospital, most treatments are provided completely free of charge. I love working …

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DSM-5 doesn’t name it, but moral distress is everywhere in medicine

Conditions
May 3, 2025

The mental health crisis clinicians face but won’t talk about this May

Ask anyone about health care reform, and you’ll likely get passionate responses. Single-payer versus market-driven. Universal coverage versus cost-containment. Clinicians, though, usually have simpler wishes: fewer hours spent charting, more time spent actually caring.

But there’s a quieter, deeper conversation that’s rarely included when we talk about health care’s problems: moral distress.

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Clinicians must be scrupulously honest in and out of work

Conditions
May 1, 2025

An excerpt from From Error to Ethics: Five Essential Lessons from Teaching Clinicians in Trouble.

Clinicians must be scrupulously honest in and out of work

About 70 percent of the clinicians who attended the course had been accused of dishonest conduct. It is so common that the ‘dishonesty’ file on my computer contains eight sub-sections:

  • Cheating in exams
  • Defrauding the National Health Service
  • Dishonesty in job applications
  • Dishonesty in a non-medical …

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The stigma surrounding diabetes harms those living with the condition. It’s time to finally stamp it out.

Conditions
April 30, 2025

Canadians have rallied together like never before to support each other and stand up for Canada in the face of U.S. tariffs and annexation threats.

People living with diabetes need that same spirit of solidarity around them to defeat a persistent stigma about the condition that leaves them feeling blamed, shamed, and judged.

Negative perceptions about people with diabetes are not only misplaced, but they are also harmful …

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Clinical research is evolving. Patient involvement is no longer optional.

Conditions
April 30, 2025

In January 2025, the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) formally adopted the updated E6(R3) Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guidelines. Annex 1 and the revised 12 principles are already in effect. Annex 2 arrives in July. This is not just regulatory housekeeping. It is a clear message to the research world: Meaningful patient involvement is no longer aspirational. It is expected.

For decades, clinical research positioned patients as participants, …

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How smartphones are stealing your focus—and what you can do about it

Conditions
April 28, 2025

Over the past two months, I embarked on a mission to complete two reading tasks: A journey in service, the autobiography of Nigeria’s former military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida, followed by Dream count, the latest work by the world-renowned writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Unfortunately, I have barely progressed beyond the opening chapters of either. My focus, the essential ingredient for deep reading, has remained elusive.

I first realized the extent of …

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Why ADHD isn’t just a childhood disorder and what that means for adults

Conditions
April 25, 2025

Current studies identify the negative impacts of failing to diagnose and treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which contributes to well-described impairment, morbidity, and mortality. Timely diagnosis, acceptance, and treatment do, in fact, improve outcomes. Benefits include a decrease in negative impacts on self-esteem, depression and other mood disorders, substance use disorders, suicidality, motor vehicle crashes, and criminality. These consequences result from easy distractibility and impulsiveness, which can be damaging …

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Fat guy in a little coat: Preventing childhood obesity

Conditions
April 24, 2025

Childhood obesity is not just about kids outgrowing their clothes faster than their parents can buy them— it’s a growing public health crisis. If we don’t step in now, the next generation might need bigger coats and even bigger health care budgets. Today, approximately one in five children and adolescents in the U.S. have obesity. The annual medical expenses related to childhood obesity in the U.S. is estimated …

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Gen Z is already transforming mental health care—are we listening?

Conditions
April 23, 2025

In a clinic in India, I once watched a young mother wait for hours to be seen, clutching her child and a paper folder filled with years of handwritten notes. There was no digital health record, no streamlined triage system—just patience, resilience, and the unspoken expectation that care would eventually come.

That moment has stayed with me—not because it was unique, but because it was far too common. It reminded me …

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Within the white walls of silence

Conditions
April 23, 2025

Silence is a prison that locks away the truth,
hiding it in the shadows of life.

Words yearn to be spoken,
but are instead swallowed whole.
It’s a safer alternative
than facing an empty void.

Your gaze is directed elsewhere,
avoiding the person who sits
before you … one who is waiting for
compassion that never arrives.

So, the spaces between words
grow longer and
the disconnect becomes stronger.

Words exchanged fall flat,
drowned out by the ticking clock
and the clicking of a keyboard
as …

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The heartbreaking pandemic story I will never forget

Conditions
April 22, 2025

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world five years ago, and the world seems to be contemplating that history lately. Numerous articles reflect on that time now that we are passing that first major milestone. In many ways, we are still struggling with the fallout and will be for the foreseeable future.

In mid-2021, things started returning to “normal” in the health care setting. The absolute jubilation of having a vaccine available …

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Pope Francis dies at 88. What his care reveals about America’s failing hospitals.

Conditions
April 21, 2025

Pope Francis passed away this morning at the age of 88. Just weeks ago, he had spent 38 days hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for what was described as “double pneumonia,” before returning to his Vatican apartment to recover.

Had he been an American hospitalized in the U.S., he might not have made it even that far.

As both a geriatric doctor and a patient, I have seen firsthand how the U.S. …

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When modesty kills: the CPR gender gap you didn’t know existed

Conditions
April 18, 2025

A chilling incident from a past summer camp at Achimota School still resonates: A young woman collapsed with her life hanging in the balance. The male Red Cross prefect, attempting to administer potentially life-saving CPR, was quickly stopped by concerned students. The bystanders’ focus was on protecting her from exposure, and it overshadowed the urgency of the situation. This experience, now viewed through the lens of my medical training, reveals …

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