Physician voices

12,751 articles · Since 2006

Articles, page 5

Who protects children from a livestreamed execution?

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Before this or any government broadcasts an execution, it should first consider an obvious public health question: How will it protect children and other vulnerable people who might see the footage? This question needs a medical answer, no matter what…

On October 8, 2026, the United States Pentagon announced plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted for the 2009 Fort Hood mass …

Losing a patient who only ever asked for a newspaper

Dr. Arshad Ashraf

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 20262

Working in the ICU is one of the toughest experiences for a new budding doctor. It's rare to find a patient who can talk. Most lie unconscious, connected to ventilators and machines that hum and beep around the clock. They…

Working in the ICU is one of the toughest experiences for a new budding doctor. It’s rare to find a patient who can talk. Most lie unconscious, connected to ventilators and machines that hum and beep around the clock. They exist in a space between life and death, and every day we witness some of them take their final breath.

That’s why I was surprised (and honestly, a little delighted) when …

Dolly bought Porter Wagoner’s songs, then gave them back

Osmund Agbo, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

It was in late spring of 1964, just a day after graduating from high school, that a diminutive farm girl packed her belongings and bade farewell to the life she had known in the Smoky Mountains of rural Tennessee. Her destination? Nashville, the mecca of country music. She left behind the two-bedroom cottage where she had lived with her parents and eleven siblings, carrying little more than a dream and …

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California medical board power and the 2026 governor’s race

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

A couple of weekends ago in a residential community in Davis, a board member came to a homeowner's door with uncorroborated claims that the homeowner's son had accepted a ride from a third party who speeds in the neighborhood. The…

A couple of weekends ago in a residential community in Davis, a board member came to a homeowner’s door with uncorroborated claims that the homeowner’s son had accepted a ride from a third party who speeds in the neighborhood. The details, including the car type, color, and driver’s complexion, did not match reality. When the homeowner said he would speak with his son, the board member identified himself by title …

A medical home pioneer meets fragmented care as a patient

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

For years, I spoke about the importance of coordinated care. Long before the term became fashionable, I helped build what would later become known as a medical home at Minot Air Force Base. The concept was straightforward. Somebody had to own the whole patient. Not just a diagnosis. Not just a specialty. Not just a laboratory value. The whole patient.

At the time, it seemed obvious. It still does. What surprises …

4 steps to prove a breach of standard of care

Howard Smith, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Step 1: Collate. Organize the standard of care and the medical intervention into 10 corresponding phases with a respective duty. Step 2: Compare. Compare corresponding phases using three measures: Background risk: Each phase in the standard of care. It is…

Step 1: Collate. Organize the standard of care and the medical intervention into 10 corresponding phases with a respective duty.

Step 2: Compare. Compare corresponding phases using three measures:

Background risk: Each phase in the standard of care. It is the probability that the complication is a random error-of-nature.
Relative risk: Risk of harm for each phase in the medical intervention. If there is no difference between a phase in standard

…

Jessie Mahoney, MD, on physician burnout and well-being: a KevinMD subscriber spotlight

Subscriber Spotlight by KevinMD

October 9, 2026Oct 9, 2026

Jessie Mahoney, MD, is a board-certified pediatrician and certified coach who spent nearly two decades as a physician leader at The Permanente Medical Group before founding Pause & Presence Coaching & Retreats. She has published 37 essays on KevinMD since…

…

Anesthesia standards should follow the patient, not the room

Dr. Girishkumar Modi

October 9, 2026Oct 9, 2026

More procedures are now performed far from the traditional operating room. Endoscopy units, interventional radiology suites, cardiac catheterization laboratories, and MRI rooms routinely host patients who need sedation or anesthesia. That expansion is a clinical success. But the room label…

That expansion is a clinical success. But the room label can create a misleading sense that the anesthesia is somehow less consequential.

Sedative and anesthetic drugs affect breathing, airway tone, blood pressure, and consciousness wherever they are given. In an endoscopy room, …

Good trouble: lessons from a physician whistleblower

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Rep. John Lewis nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, marching for rights that should never have required a march. His courage redefined the moral calculus of resistance, what he called "good trouble, necessary trouble." I've…

I’ve created trouble too. Not on bridges, but in boardrooms. Not with batons overhead, but with data, dissent, and quiet refusal. I’ve challenged supervisors, disrupted systems, and questioned protocols that harmed more …

Physician leaders at the bedside see what dashboards miss

Manoj Sreedharan, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift. When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes…

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift.

When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes you help oversee, problems become difficult to ignore. You see where the workflow slows down, where responsibilities are unclear, and where a seemingly simple administrative change creates extra work. That is …

Physician professionalism and the 7 virtues of Bushido

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

As a fifth-grade student, I was introduced to Japanese culture through a school program. I lived in Japan on an American military base from 1967 to 1970. I remember learning about tea ceremonies, calligraphy, and the samurai code known as…

At the time, I understood very little of it. What I remembered was the idea that a person should strive to become the best version of himself every day. Not …

What physician mothers miss while caring for everyone else

Loryn Kromrey, MD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

It's been a great summer, but we're also looking forward to getting back into the school routine. This was my first summer off since my second year of medical school. For almost twenty years, my summers were spent in medical…

It’s been a great summer, but we’re also looking forward to getting back into the school routine. This was my first summer off since my second year of medical school.

For almost twenty years, my summers were spent in medical school, residency, fellowship, studying for and taking my boards, interviewing for jobs, or working. Medicine and motherhood were intertwined from the very beginning. My water broke while I was in the …

The history of managed care told through its language

Howard Smith, MD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

The 1960s marked the end of "the good old days" of America's health care system. In those days, there were no HMOs, PPOs, medical exchanges and the like; there were just doctors, hospitals, and health insurance. Health insurance protected against…

The 1960s marked the end of “the good old days” of America’s health care system. In those days, there were no HMOs, PPOs, medical exchanges and the like; there were just doctors, hospitals, and health insurance. Health insurance protected against unexpected medical conditions and reimbursed according to the UCR, the usual, customary, and reasonable. The 1960s were much simpler.

Indeed, there were medical malpractice lawsuits, but people had more realistic expectations …

Self-sacrifice in medicine needs self-trust to balance it

Christine Kempton, MD

October 6, 2026Oct 6, 2026

The lessons no one formally taught us Your pager goes off in the middle of the night. You slip out of bed, trying not to wake your spouse, and call the emergency department back from the guest room. You hope…

The lessons no one formally taught us

Your pager goes off in the middle of the night. You slip out of bed, trying not to wake your spouse, and call the emergency department back from the guest room. You hope it was a missed page so you can return to sleep, while knowing a misfired page will feel almost as frustrating as the interruption itself.

It is the end of clinic, and …

How palliative care improves climate change communication

Christian Archer, MD & Daniel Mahoney, MD

October 6, 2026Oct 6, 2026

Imagine sending a page to the palliative care service that reads: "Patient is 4.5 billion years old with recent history of fever and nonhealing wounds, now in multisystem failure. Request consult for IDT support, symptom management, and goals-of-care conversation." While…

Imagine sending a page to the palliative care service that reads: “Patient is 4.5 billion years old with recent history of fever and nonhealing wounds, now in multisystem failure. Request consult for IDT support, symptom management, and goals-of-care conversation.” While tongue in cheek, there are clear parallels between communicating with patients about serious illness and communicating with patients about climate change. In both cases, our palliative care colleagues’ serious illness …

Physician leadership roles have a cost no résumé shows

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 6, 2026Oct 6, 2026

The other day, LinkedIn informed me that I was a strong match for a developmental-behavioral pediatrics section chief position at an academic medical center in the Midwest. The irony was hard to miss. Years ago, I held essentially the same…

The other day, LinkedIn informed me that I was a strong match for a developmental-behavioral pediatrics section chief position at an academic medical center in the Midwest.

The irony was hard to miss. Years ago, I held essentially the same leadership position. It nearly killed me.

The recommendation arrived complete with all the reassuring language modern recruiting systems like to use. My qualifications matched the position well. My experience aligned with the …

Goals of care should be decided long before the ICU

Humeira Badsha, MD

October 6, 2026Oct 6, 2026

In the midst of a busy Monday clinic, I field calls from the nursing facility in India where my aunt is slowly dying. The young doctors there are traumatized by our family's refusal to have her admitted to a hospital.…

In the midst of a busy Monday clinic, I field calls from the nursing facility in India where my aunt is slowly dying. The young doctors there are traumatized by our family’s refusal to have her admitted to a hospital. I have become their counselor and guide.

My aunt was a mother to many nieces and nephews, despite having no children of her own. Over the years, I watched her keep …

Who monitors patients after telehealth ADHD prescribing?

Timothy Lesaca, MD

October 5, 2026Oct 5, 2026

Last month, I took on five new patients who were already prescribed stimulants. I had not met any of them in person before. Each came to me with a diagnosis, an active Schedule II prescription, and a chart note from a telehealth visit that I cannot fully piece together. My role now seems to be continuing these prescriptions. I am concerned about the handoff, and I doubt anyone decided who …

Whole-person care starts in the operating room

Jerron C. Hill, MD

October 4, 2026Oct 4, 2026

For most of my career, my work has begun at the moment a patient is most vulnerable. As an anesthesiologist, I meet people at the threshold of surgery, often anxious, sometimes in pain, and always placing extraordinary trust in a physician they may have met only minutes earlier. My responsibility is to protect them through an experience they cannot control and, under general anesthesia, cannot describe while it is happening.

That …

What doctors are talking about in 2026: AI, pain, burnout

Insights by KevinMD

October 4, 2026Oct 4, 2026

Clinicians wrote about AI more than anything else this quarter. Readers spent their time elsewhere: on burnout, on pain and opioids, and on what medicine costs the people who practice it. The first Insights by KevinMD report.

What doctors are talking about in 2026: AI, pain, burnout

Physician voices

Articles, page 5

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