Conditions

How cultural competence transforms modern parent coaching

Conditions

May 19, 2026

Whether parent coaching is getting delivered formally, through parent behavior training programs, or informally, through evidence-based parenting advice and recommendations shared in clinic with the family, parent coaching has become an essential part of clinical care today, both in general and in subspecialized pediatric clinics. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends anticipatory parenting guidance to be provided starting at the first visit. The AAP also recommends that pediatric health …

How anal health education helps detect anal cancer

Talar Tejirian, MD

Conditions

May 19, 2026

10 years ago, I met a local news health reporter at my cousin’s house. By then, I had been a general surgery attending for almost a decade and was shocked by the lack of public health education about anal health care issues. I had also amassed a particularly busy proctology clinic over the years, seeing patient after patient who had suffered for extended periods, afraid to see a doctor and …

Compassionate health care transforms the patient journey

Kim Downey, PT & Randy McNeely

Conditions

May 19, 2026

Randy McNeely: We are never more vulnerable than in the moments when life delivers news we did not expect, and are not prepared to hear. That moment came for my wife and me in early August 2023.

A few weeks earlier, Kimberly was helping our daughter move a small chest freezer when she felt a sharp twinge in her right thigh. It seemed like a pulled muscle, so she treated it …

Primary aldosteronism hides behind high blood pressure

Sanjay B. Dixit, MD

Conditions

May 18, 2026

A little-known and misunderstood disease affecting as many as 12 million Americans, putting them at risk of potentially deadly complications, is often missed or misdiagnosed.

Primary aldosteronism (PA) is a serious condition that affects as many as 5 to 10 percent of adults with high blood pressure (BP). High BP is widely prevalent in the U.S., nearly half of all adults (almost 120 million individuals) have it. Yet, for many years, …

Cognitive overload in cardiac arrest is a human problem

Michael Peck, MD

Conditions

May 18, 2026

Thirty years ago, I ran a cardiac arrest in the operating room. The patient survived. The room eventually quieted down. The nurses began cleaning up. People moved on to the next case.

But I remember standing there afterward feeling exhausted and unsettled. It had been several months since my ACLS recertification, and during the code I caught myself mentally reaching for details of the algorithm that had once felt automatic. I …

How cancer care terminology harms patient choices

Zachary Scharf, MD, MBA

Conditions

May 17, 2026

“Can we fit just a few more?” This was the question I was asked one snowy evening. Pretty soon, I found myself surrounded by no less than 20 people. They had all convened here to see the man lying in bed at the center of the room. He had struggled with cancer, which had progressed through numerous treatments, leading to his current intubated and sedated state. As an internal medicine …

Breast cancer rehabilitation requires occupational therapy

Marguerite Frank, MOTR/L

Conditions

May 17, 2026

“I wish I could get a free boob job.”

It is a comment I heard more than once after sharing I was undergoing a double mastectomy. I understand the impulse, people do not know what to say. But the joke reveals something worth examining: how little most people understand about what this surgery actually costs you.

At 28, I found out I carried the breast cancer gene 1 (BRCA1) mutation. At 34, …

Athletic trainer scope of practice is not a turf war

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

May 17, 2026

A high school basketball player lands awkwardly after a fast break. For one second, the gym goes silent. He grabs his ankle. His coach runs toward him. His teammates stop moving. His parents, sitting near the sideline, do not know whether to hope he can stand up or pray that he will not try.

In that first minute, no one is thinking about professional titles. The question is painfully simple: Who …

Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak exposes CDC missteps

P. Dileep Kumar, MD, MBA

Conditions

May 17, 2026

The recent outbreak of hantavirus infection on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius raises several questions and concerns. Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord was the first person to die of hantavirus infection on the ship on April 11, 2026. He and his wife, Mirjam, 69, had recently visited northern Patagonia in Argentina, 1,500 miles north and before boarding the ship at a southern Argentine port. So far there have been eight …

Patient involvement transforms modern clinical research

Niharika Singh

Conditions

May 17, 2026

In medicine, patients are often seen as recipients of care rather than contributors to it. But their lived experiences bring something data alone cannot: context, meaning, and truth. Early in my exposure to clinical research, I understood it primarily through a quantitative lens. Outcomes were measured in numbers: complication rates, recovery times, and statistical significance. These metrics are essential, but they do not always capture what matters most to patients. …

24-hour urine collection flaws expose clinical bias

Ali Kashkouli, MD

Conditions

May 16, 2026

There are few rituals in medicine as aspirational as the 24-hour urine collection. On paper we see an elegant examination. A direct measurement of renal function, grounded in physiology and liberated from the assumptions that plague our estimating equations. In practice, however, what we see is a plastic jug and a set of instructions that compete poorly with daily life. What we are left with is a quiet understanding, shared …

Opportunistic screening finds coronary artery disease

Frederic W. Grannis, Jr., MD

Conditions

May 16, 2026

In New Orleans, shoppers often request “lagniappe,” pronounced lan-yap, to express their desire for something extra, the baker’s dozen, a 13th donut. Added benefit was a major topic of interest for the 500 participants in the combined International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (IELCAP), International Early Lung Cancer and Respiratory Tract (IELCART), and AGILE 3 conferences held March 19 to 21, 2026, in Gdansk, Poland. Although this topic ranged freely …

Substance use screening is vital for adolescent health

Stephen M. Sandelich, MD

Conditions

May 16, 2026

Last year, I saw a teenager in the emergency department (ED). He was 15, and his mother brought him in after finding a vape in his backpack. She wanted him screened for substance use, but he wanted no part of it.

I asked him a few questions anyway. He gave short answers and stared at the ceiling while his mother watched from the doorway. No one in the room felt comfortable. …

5 health-destroying myths perpetuated by marketing

Martha Rosenberg

Conditions

May 16, 2026

Scent beads and laundry additives are innocuous

If you are online or on broadcast you cannot miss it: personal care corporations telling you that you stink. Even if you are using deodorant on “those places,” your body smells all over, say a disturbing number of ads, and the odor “transfers” all over your house. Just saying.

The manic ads for dryer sheets, detergents, fabric softeners, and scent “love stories” do not mention …

Emotional over-functioning drives the competence trap

J.H. Lynn

Conditions

May 15, 2026

There is a danger in being good at holding everything together. People start to believe you do not need holding. Competence becomes camouflage. Reliability becomes a cage. And one day you wake up realizing you have become the infrastructure of a life that no one is helping you carry. For those who thought they could carry everything alone, I have realized there comes a time when a “foreclosure notice” may …

When GLP-1 doesn’t work, look at chronic stress

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

May 15, 2026

A 59-year-old woman sat tearfully in my office today. She had spent seven weeks on tirzepatide with virtually no weight loss. “How is this possible?” she asked. “I’m eating like a saint.”

She had struggled with obesity and weight-related frustration for years. Recently divorced, grieving a death in the family, caring for a mentally ill adult daughter, working full time, sleeping poorly, and living with severe anxiety, she described her stress …

Normal labs miss what most patients are living through

Shiv K. Goel, MD

Conditions

May 14, 2026

She sat across from me, results in hand, and asked the question I have heard more times than I can count.

“If everything is normal, why do I still feel like this?”

I did not have a clean answer. Not because she was wrong to ask. Because she was right, and medicine, at that moment, had run out of language.

Her CBC was normal. Her CMP was normal. Thyroid unremarkable. Inflammatory markers unimpressive. …

Early bone loss is missed until something breaks

Steven E. Warren, MD, DPA

Conditions

May 14, 2026

Bone loss is one of the most predictable surprises in medicine.

It is predictable because the risk factors are everywhere: menopause, aging, low muscle, low protein intake, steroid exposure, inflammatory disease, low sex hormones, diabetes, smoking, alcohol, thyroid disease, malabsorption, kidney disease, eating disorders, and medications that quietly affect bone. It is a surprise because many patients do not know there is a problem until something breaks. That is not prevention. …

Recurrent sinus infections leave damage beyond your sinuses

Franklyn R. Gergits, DO, MBA

Conditions

May 14, 2026

When a patient walks into my office after five failed antibiotic courses, the first thing that goes through my mind isn’t clinical. It’s human. I’m worried about what happened to the healthy bacteria in her nose, the protective organisms that have been defending her sinuses since the day she was born. I’m worried about her gut. And honestly, I’m worried about something bigger than both: the generations of kids and …

Why clinical ethics and medical law demand your attention

Daniel Sokol, JD

Conditions

May 14, 2026

Most clinicians give little thought to ethics and law until something goes wrong. This is understandable. They are immersed in concrete clinical tasks, ordering tests, reading reports, examining patients, and running clinics. Ethics can feel abstract and legal rules distant from daily practice.

As an ethicist and trial attorney, I see the consequences of ethical error every week. They can harm patients, erode trust in the profession, and destroy promising careers. …

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