Physician voices

12,751 articles · Since 2006

Articles, page 12

Explaining clinical reasoning to patients in five questions

August 8, 2026Aug 8, 2026

Every summer, a new class of medical students puts on a short white coat for the first time and walks onto a hospital floor. Elsewhere, third-year students begin their first clinical clerkships, and new residents are several weeks into carrying…

They will be taught multiple approaches to the art, science, and practice of medicine. They will learn …

Automation bias in medicine already has doctors deferring

Colin G. Knight, MD

August 8, 2026Aug 8, 2026

At the hospital where I operate, most of the pediatric subspecialists never walk through the door. Endocrinology, hematology, infectious disease: The consult happens by phone. They read the chart, they ask questions, they leave a plan. I would like to tell you the plan is usually right. I have no way to know that. The hospitalist examined the child. The specialist did not, and there is no second version of …

How administrative bloat broke American medicine

Dan Rusu, MD

August 8, 2026Aug 8, 2026

I trained at Cook County Hospital in Chicago thirty years ago. We did not have RVUs. We did not have prior authorization. We did not have a ratio of ten administrators for every physician. We had patients who came through a door where nobody asked for their insurance card, and we did our best for them. That was the system. It worked.

What replaced it is documented in public data that …

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Most medical malpractice lawsuits are meritless

Howard Smith, MD

August 6, 2026Aug 6, 2026

The story of medical malpractice litigation in the United States is the endless struggle to find meaning. The United States is a litigious society. One out of every 230 Americans is a lawyer, and one out of every eight Americans…

The story of medical malpractice litigation in the United States is the endless struggle to find meaning.

The United States is a litigious society. One out of every 230 Americans is a lawyer, and one out of every eight Americans will be involved in litigation in one way or another and will need a lawyer. There are 40 million lawsuits per year. Between 20,000 and 85,000 are medical malpractice claims. …

The one-dimensional doctor is going extinct

Elizabeth Agyeman Prempeh, MD

August 6, 2026Aug 6, 2026

I was recently watching the wedding and honeymoon vlog of one of my favorite content creators. Weddings are fascinating milestones. It is probably the only moment in your entire life where you get absolutely every person you love gathered together in one single room. You are the undisputed center of attention. All eyes are on you, and the atmosphere is pure, concentrated love.

But as I was watching those perfect moments …

The patient experience question physicians get wrong

Manoj Sreedharan, MD

August 6, 2026Aug 6, 2026

There is a question I have heard countless times throughout my career. "Was the patient happy?" It is usually asked with good intentions, but I have often wondered whether we are asking the wrong question. As physicians, our responsibility has…

There is a question I have heard countless times throughout my career.

“Was the patient happy?”

It is usually asked with good intentions, but I have often wondered whether we are asking the wrong question. As physicians, our responsibility has never been to make every patient happy. We cannot promise antibiotics for viral infections, unnecessary imaging for reassurance, or pain medications simply because they are expected. Good medicine often requires uncomfortable conversations …

Why evidence alone doesn’t change minds

Steve Sobel, MD

August 6, 2026Aug 6, 2026

If solid evidence reveals that major, long-held beliefs rest on wobbly pillars of false assumptions, how can we convince others to jettison such beliefs and embrace novel approaches? What can we learn from the tragic case of Ignaz Semmelweis in…

In 1847, one in six mothers perished from childbed (puerperal) fever at the Vienna General Hospital where Dr. Semmelweis worked. In some months up to 30 percent of …

Read more…

Why evidence alone doesn’t change minds

Why using AI to write articles needs an audit trail

Bobby Dubois, MD, PhD

August 5, 2026Aug 5, 2026

Not long ago, I wrote a Sensible Medicine article about AI called "I invented a headache to test AI and here is what I found." I concluded that for diagnosing my headache (and a few other conditions), AI got things…

Not long ago, I wrote a Sensible Medicine article about AI called “I invented a headache to test AI and here is what I found.” I concluded that for diagnosing my headache (and a few other conditions), AI got things wrong quite often. When given full history of my problem, it did well, but a typical patient doesn’t know the pertinent negatives and positives to provide the GPT. False-positive …

Medical misinformation arrives before the physician does

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

August 5, 2026Aug 5, 2026

An excerpt from Medicine Versus Politics: Three Tales of Patient Survival. Deception has always been a weapon, but in our time it has become a system. In medicine especially, where facts should be the most trusted currency, lies can wound…

An excerpt from Medicine Versus Politics: Three Tales of Patient Survival.

Deception has always been a weapon, but in our time it has become a system. In medicine especially, where facts should be the most trusted currency, lies can wound as surely as disease itself. Repetition, amplification, and manipulation turn rumor into “truth” at a frightening pace. When politics co-opts this process, the consequences are not merely theoretical; they can …

Tobacco harm reduction changes the talk with your doctor

Edward Anselm, MD

August 5, 2026Aug 5, 2026

Until recently people who smoke cigarettes were presented with a simple choice: continue smoking and worsen the risk and severity of tobacco-related disease or make another quit attempt. The doctor would ask, “Do you believe that you are ready to quit smoking?” Both doctor and patient would be relieved when the answer was “no.” The doctor was given back some valuable time …

How specialists can handle difficult patients

Joan Naidorf, DO

August 5, 2026Aug 5, 2026

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a group of neurogastroenterologists who practice at a major referral center. These specialty physicians treat people with complex digestive disorders such as gastroparesis, abnormal motility, and irritable bowel disease. They also treat patients with illnesses categorized as “functional gastrointestinal disorders,” where no specific physical or lab abnormality can be identified. The people who have these disorders can get very frustrated and unhappy …

Gratitude in medicine: the people who carried me

Timir Banerjee, MD

August 5, 2026Aug 5, 2026

Reason I find that this exercise of thanking and expressing gratitude makes my journey to the land of the unknown joyful. I thought I should do this when I have a clear mind and good health. I am teaching the…

Reason

I find that this exercise of thanking and expressing gratitude makes my journey to the land of the unknown joyful. I thought I should do this when I have a clear mind and good health. I am teaching the residents now to understand its value. I am writing this now so that I am not too late to thank all those who helped transform my life. I want to …

Tele-critical care today is not what the studies actually tested

Keith Corl, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

In an early 2026 piece, I criticized the growing practice of outsourcing bedside ICU care to tele-critical care programs. I argued that replacing the in-person work of physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs), and physician assistants (PAs) with remote physicians leads to the lack of a bedside leader, shoddy exams, breaks in the continuity of care, the depersonalization of the doctor-patient relationship, and an overall degradation in the quality of …

Shifting health care toward prevention, not just treatment

Narinder Singh Parhar, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

Health care has never possessed more scientific knowledge, more sophisticated technology, or more specialized expertise than it does today. Yet despite these remarkable advances, chronic disease continues to rise, health care costs continue to escalate, physician burnout persists, and patients…

This paradox raises an important question. A probable explanation: Perhaps our greatest challenge is not a lack of scientific progress. …

How clinicians find recovery from gaslighting

Donald J. Murphy, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

I work with many victims of gaslighting around the country. We learn from each other. Those who have lost their licenses to work can follow these steps to regain their licenses and resume their careers. First, acknowledge that any victim…

First, acknowledge that any victim of gaslighting suffers some degree of PTSD. Severe gaslighting leads to complex PTSD. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) laws put in place before 2000 state that those suffering from …

What plain medical language gives families back

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

Medicine is built on language. Not just terminology, but a shared vocabulary that allows us to describe the body with precision, to communicate risk without panic, and to translate complexity into clarity for families. Yet in recent years, medical language has drifted toward two extremes: jargon inflation on one side, oversimplification on the other. Both leave patients, and young clinicians, unmoored.

I was reminded of this recently while helping my son …

Who your malpractice defense lawyer really works for

Howard Smith, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

A miscreant is simply a troublemaker. When it comes to a medical malpractice lawsuit, the biggest miscreant is the defense attorney followed closely by the medical malpractice insurance company. For a doctor, medical malpractice insurance coverage is the difference between…

A miscreant is simply a troublemaker. When it comes to a medical malpractice lawsuit, the biggest miscreant is the defense attorney followed closely by the medical malpractice insurance company.

For a doctor, medical malpractice insurance coverage is the difference between financial security and ruin. I practice in the state of Maryland. Maryland law does not force physicians to buy medical malpractice insurance. Nevertheless, doctors must carry a policy, which has a …

The signs of depression a husband almost missed

Nneka Oluoha, MD

August 3, 2026Aug 3, 2026

An excerpt from Live for Me, Nkem. We fall into silence for a while before she says, "So what has Nkem done this time?" My eyes meet hers. She crosses her arms, watching me like someone bracing for a fight.…

An excerpt from Live for Me, Nkem.

We fall into silence for a while before she says, “So what has Nkem done this time?”

My eyes meet hers. She crosses her arms, watching me like someone bracing for a fight.

I rub my face and breathe out. “She hasn’t done anything.”

“Hmm. You are not here to complain about her like you did before? Wasn’t it around this time last year, right after …

The hard truth about short-term medical mission trips

Priya Panneerselvam, DO

August 3, 2026Aug 3, 2026

In 2024, I joined a medical mission trip across East Africa with my spiritual community. Our guiding principle was simple: "Love all, serve all." The goal was selfless service: providing free medical care to anyone who needed it. Roughly sixty…

In 2024, I joined a medical mission trip across East Africa with my spiritual community. Our guiding principle was simple: “Love all, serve all.” The goal was selfless service: providing free medical care to anyone who needed it. Roughly sixty of us traveled together, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and support staff, moving across rural sites to set up temporary medical camps.

We saw hundreds of patients in environments that shifted constantly: church …

The ethics of medical images begins with provenance

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

August 3, 2026Aug 3, 2026

In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault introduced the concept of the "medical gaze" to describe how physicians translate a patient's lived experience into biomedical terms, emphasizing information that fits a clinical framework while setting aside what does not.…

In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault introduced the concept of the “medical gaze” to describe how physicians translate a patient’s lived experience into biomedical terms, emphasizing information that fits a clinical framework while setting aside what does not. Every gaze involves selecting certain details from the vast stream of sensory information. In medicine, that selection often privileges disease, symptoms, and measurable findings while overlooking the personal, social, and …

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