Conditions

Why psychological safety in health care systems matters

Conditions

May 1, 2026

In health care, we often talk about psychological safety as something leaders create, encouraging people to speak up, be open, and learn from mistakes. But in practice, many clinicians already know: Whether it is truly safe to speak depends on what happens after they do. The term “psychological safety,” introduced by Amy Edmondson, describes a shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. But in health care environments, …

Why our health care system is failing chronic disease patients

Beata Pasek, EdD

Conditions

April 30, 2026

Chronic disease is rising. Our system is not designed for it. This is not a controversial observation. Across clinical practice, research, and health system leadership, there is growing recognition that the burden of chronic illness is increasing and beginning earlier in life. What is less often acknowledged is that the structure of our health care system has not evolved at the same pace. In clinical settings, this shift is already …

Pediatric airway health and early childhood development clues

Brooke Quinn

Conditions

April 30, 2026

I was watching a medical drama recently when a physician identified a patient’s age, not from a chart, but from their teeth. The logic was simple. Worn enamel. Coffee staining. Fully erupted molars. It made for good television. But it also revealed something much bigger, something we rarely talk about in medicine, and almost never teach outside of it: The body is always leaving clues. We just do not know …

Surviving cystic fibrosis: a double lung transplant journey

Rebecca Poole and Raymond Poole

Conditions

April 29, 2026

I was eight months old when I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness that slowly damages the lungs and can affect digestion and other organs. My parents quickly learned the rhythms of it all: treatments, medications, and constant vigilance.

But here is the part people do not always expect: I still got to be a kid. I rode horses. I ran cross country. I went to college. I fell …

When a stomach bug is actually an atypical heart attack

Karim Ali, MD, MBA

Conditions

April 29, 2026

A patient arrives in the emergency department vomiting. Not once or twice, but repeatedly, leaning over the bedside basin, pale and sweating, clearly miserable. Between episodes, he tries to explain what happened. Earlier in the day he felt completely fine. Then the nausea started suddenly, followed by vomiting, cramping, and a cold sweat that made his shirt cling to his back. By the time he arrived in the emergency room, …

6 signs of burnout in high-achieving students

Ritu Goel, MD

Conditions

April 29, 2026

The student sitting across from me didn’t think she was burned out. She had just made the dean’s list, locked in a competitive summer internship, and was running two clubs. She was sleeping four hours a night, had stopped texting friends back, and described feeling “nothing” when she opened her acceptance letter to a graduate program she had spent two years working toward. “This is just what college is supposed …

How high pressure destroys relational care in nursing

Megan Diaz, RN

Conditions

April 28, 2026

I am a registered nurse with 16 years of bedside experience, and I have come to understand a problem in health care that is rarely named directly: The conditions we work under shape what we are able to perceive. Care is still delivered. The chart is complete, the discharge is placed, and the bed opens. From the outside, the system appears to function, but something essential is missing, and the …

Why mental health care in Nigeria needs a new approach

Dr. Mansur Auwal Sani

Conditions

April 28, 2026

It started with a headache. At least, that is what she told the nurse. A middle-aged woman sat quietly in the outpatient clinic, her hands folded tightly in her lap. She had visited the hospital three times in two months complaining of headaches, fatigue, and body pains. Her blood pressure was normal. Her blood tests were unremarkable. Her physical examination revealed nothing alarming. Yet something was clearly wrong. After a …

Bridging the gap in neurodevelopmental care and pediatrics

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

April 27, 2026

Long before I stood on collapsing bridges between DBP and NDD, I was the 1977 kid who intentionally derailed Bobby Jr.’s grand “seed money” scheme for free home heating oil for the poor, not out of mischief, but because there was no plan behind it. It was a hallucinogenic vision dressed up as strategy, with no capability for realization. Even then, I could not pretend something workable existed when it …

Overcoming barriers to holding babies with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy during therapeutic cooling

Newborn Brain Society and Hope for HIE

Conditions

April 27, 2026

Imagine going to the hospital after nine months of pregnancy expecting to have a perfect birth and baby only to suffer from a tragic birth complication. Your doctor shares that your baby has a brain injury and must be transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for cooling treatment. You meet your baby surrounded by machines and loud monitors. For three long days during this cooling treatment, you are …

A physician’s journey with a hidden CSF leak and delayed diagnosis

Anonymous

Conditions

April 27, 2026

In 2023, I was in a serious motor vehicle collision. The injury that followed, a vertebral artery dissection, required real recovery. I did the work and thought I had come out the other side. I was looking forward to celebrating my three-year anniversary since the accident. I was feeling grateful. I was not expecting what came next.

The bike

I love spinning. The bike was the first thing I reclaimed after the …

Bariatric surgery vs. semaglutides vs. endoscopic visceral lipectomy

Robert Cucin, MD, JD

Conditions

April 27, 2026

Despite the emergence of new pharmacologic alternatives to traditional bariatric surgery, the global obesity epidemic continues to escalate. Semaglutides, while effective for some, are costly, require weekly injections, and often cause side effects that lead many patients to discontinue treatment and subsequently regain much or all the weight they lost. Both bypass and restrictive bariatric procedures carry significant risks, side effects, and long-term lifestyle adjustments, and most patients ultimately reach …

The hidden costs of delayed diagnosis and diagnostic ambiguity

Bita Ghatan

Conditions

April 26, 2026

One of the most damaging patterns in health care is also one of the most accepted: delayed diagnosis.

What stays with me is not only the diagnosis that came too late. It is everything that happened before it. The months. Sometimes the years. The symptoms that were minimized, misread, or explained away. The patient who was still struggling, but without enough clarity to move care forward. The family trying to function …

Why the doctor-patient relationship survives when trust in public health fails

Myles Deal, MD

Conditions

April 26, 2026

Once the lockdowns from COVID-19 began, a new normal of distrusting America’s public health officials started. Dr. Anthony Fauci quickly became the most famous and controversial physician in America. At the start of the pandemic, having the responsibility of communicating information and data with the entire country, his advice was trusted by most Americans; a Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that in December 2020, 90 percent of Democrats and …

Why cooking for better health makes dietary changes easier

Oliver Power

Conditions

April 26, 2026

Recently, my mother was told by her doctors that her high blood pressure was a concern and that she needed to make dietary changes and eat foods lower in sodium. Seemed simple. To my mother, what was clear was the need for significant dietary change to stay below 2,300 mg of sodium, the recommended limit by the American Heart Association. Sure, she would make sure to not eat food overpowered …

Why local care matters for peripheral arterial disease

Devin Zarkowsky, MD

Conditions

April 25, 2026

When asked by the surgery department chair as a medical student why I wanted to treat vascular patients, my response was to be useful, useful to people with a challenging systemic disease that often results in stroke, amputation, and death. Often, wounds that have not healed for months on a foot or a hand, or persistent leg pain provoked by walking or simply laying in bed are subtle indicators that …

The hidden dangers of dental sedation and dental anesthesia in kids

Irim Salik, MD

Conditions

April 24, 2026

A healthy, 4-year-old girl was brought to the pediatric dental office for treatment of several cavities. The parents were told their child would be given medication to help her “sleep” through the procedure. Easier and quicker than going to a hospital, office-based dental sedation was presented as a safe, routine option for children.

After the sleeping medication was administered, the child grew quiet and became still. The dental work began. At …

What a tiny dog taught me about the nervous system

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

April 24, 2026

Bree is an 11 1/2 year-old, 4.2-pound micro mutt who once lived on the streets of Long Beach. She eventually wound up at Long Beach Animal Care Services, where she sat in a crowded cold cement kennel with no bed, no blanket, no toys, and one very sick basset hound with parvovirus. Every dog in that kennel was scheduled to be euthanized on Christmas Eve 2014. If it weren’t for …

Rethinking nutrition policy on ultra-processed food

Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD

Conditions

April 24, 2026

For more than a decade, the phrase “ultra-processed food” has functioned as nutritional shorthand for danger, a dietary villain blamed for rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The public message has been simple: If it is ultra-processed, avoid it. But science is rarely that simple.

My colleagues and I recently reviewed the growing body of research examining ultra-processed foods, not as a single monolithic category, but as distinct …

How to treat chronic pain and depression together

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions

April 23, 2026

As a physician who has spent years managing patients with persistent pain, I often encounter the same frustrating cycle. A patient arrives with unrelenting back pain that has lasted for months. They describe not just physical discomfort but a deepening sense of hopelessness, fatigue, and withdrawal from life. Is the pain causing the depression, or did underlying depressive symptoms amplify an initially manageable ache into something chronic and debilitating? It …

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