Is it time to embrace augmented empathy while using artificial intelligence in health care?

Tech
September 30, 2025

Introduction: a double-edged disruptor

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly insinuated itself and is transforming nearly every corner of modern life. Health care is no exception. With the rise of advanced chatbots, symptom checkers, and health-focused algorithms, patients now have 24/7 access to vast medical knowledge at their fingertips in seconds. The excitement is understandable: AI can demystify medical “doctor-speak” or jargon, suggest possible diagnoses and treatment options, and empower patients to …

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Why physician leadership should be taught from day one of medical school

Physician
September 29, 2025

All physicians lead, not just those with designated leadership titles, such as Medical Director, Department Chair, or Chief Medical Officer. Leadership is foundational to the doctor’s role.

Fortunately, leadership is a learned skill and improving physicians’ leadership skills can change how well we do our key job of taking care of patients. As physicians improve individual leadership skills the entire health care system will reap the benefits: nurses, technicians, administrators, finance …

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What Paige Bueckers’s historic rookie season can teach doctors

Physician
September 29, 2025

Paige Bueckers, a 23-year-old WNBA star, was drafted number one this year to the Dallas Wings and has been having a historic rookie season. Against the Los Angeles Sparks on August 20, she scored forty-four points while shooting eighty percent, tying an all-time WNBA rookie record. As a physician, I find that Bueckers’s mindset has a lot to teach me about being a physician. Here are the top five Paige …

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Can a doctor’s personal post violate their oath?

Conditions
September 29, 2025

At lunch on September 10, 2025, I opened Instagram for a palate cleanser: cute dog videos, life hack reels, something sweet and uplifting. Instead, I ran into a video and headline I wanted to dismiss as a deepfake. It was graphic and disorienting and, for a few seconds, I tried to bargain with reality: This cannot be real, and if it is, how is it on my phone? Would it …

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The cost of illegal immigration on Black communities

Physician
September 29, 2025

In the shadowed corridors of America’s great academic hospitals, those bastions of progressive piety nestled in sanctuary cities like Denver, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, a quiet usurpation unfolds. For decades, as a physician committed to mentoring Black Americans, I have viewed my profession not merely as a vocation but as a form of restitution: a personal reckoning with the sins of our white forebears, whose legacy of chattel …

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A physician’s guide to managing interruptions

Conditions
September 29, 2025

You are entering orders, rounding, or thinking through a patient problem in the hospital when a team member interrupts. Then comes another interruption. And another. You lose your train of thought, and you feel your jaw clench. Does this sound familiar? Physicians are expected to be efficient, accurate, and approachable, yet these three goals are nearly unattainable due to constant interruptions. Studies show that physicians are interrupted, during critical tasks, …

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Stop worrying about when to exercise

Conditions
September 29, 2025

He literally rolls into my office every three months, shoes still clipped to his carbon-fiber lifestyle. Lycra damp, Apple Watch buzzing, resting heart rate of 42. He is fit, smart, and tightly wound.

“Doc,” he begins, eyes wide, “I read that morning workouts burn more fat and lower clotting factors. Should I move my rides earlier? Or maybe late evening is better for heart rate variability?”

This is a man who, when …

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The evolving field of inflammatory bowel disease care — why staying educated matters more than ever

Podcast
September 29, 2025
YouTube video

This article is sponsored by Takeda.

When I started in gastroenterology 19 years ago, I didn’t imagine my professional journey would lead me to specialize so deeply in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). But once I began caring for people with Crohn’s disease and …

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When a pediatrician becomes the parent navigating childhood obesity [PODCAST]

Podcast
September 28, 2025
YouTube video

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Internal medicine-pediatric physician Chrissie Ott discusses her article “When the pediatrician is the parent: a personal reckoning with childhood obesity.” Chrissie shares the deeply personal story of her own child’s struggles with …

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Endometriosis, AMH, and your fertility

Conditions
September 28, 2025

A young woman in her late twenties came to me after surgery for extensive endometriosis. The procedure had given her relief; her pain was gone. Her follow-up testing looked reassuring: her fallopian tubes were open on hysterosalpingogram (HSG), and her anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) level was above 4 ng/mL, which is considered normal. Her question was straightforward: “If my AMH is good and my tubes are open, doesn’t that mean everything …

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Why we need national nurse-to-patient ratios

Policy
September 28, 2025

My current feeling as a nurse is more closely related to those of a line cook than to what I imagined nursing would be. Patients arrive with complex medical needs, yet we are forced to see them as checklists to be processed before the next shift arrives. Turnover feels like moving products down a line instead of treating people with care and dignity. This is not a failure of individual …

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Should older physicians face competency tests?

Physician
September 28, 2025

Commercial airline pilots are required to retire at 65 under Federal Aviation Administration regulations. It’s not ageism; it’s safety. Yet physicians, whose decisions can be just as life-or-death, face no such requirement. As a former internist, chief medical officer, and hospital CEO, I have seen what happens when physicians practice past their prime. The results can be dangerous, heartbreaking, and entirely preventable.

When “going out on top” doesn’t happen

During my tenure …

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Why self-care is not enough for clinicians

Conditions
September 28, 2025

Sarah, an emergency room nurse with eight years of experience, did not leave because she stopped caring. She left because the numbers no longer worked. Student loans outpaced her wages, overtime became mandatory without premium pay, and patient loads rose to unsafe levels. Eventually, the arithmetic of her life and work collapsed.

Sarah’s story is not unusual. Across the country, clinicians are leaving medicine in numbers that no longer feel like …

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Why physicians and surgeons leave their first job, and what would help

Physician
September 28, 2025

Each academic year, I have watched as a new class of residents and fellows prepares to graduate and launch their medical careers. They step out of the structured training environment into a professional world that is exciting, expansive, and, for many, overwhelming. Clinically, they are well trained. But residency rarely prepares physicians to recognize and advocate for what they truly need to thrive in practice. The data reflect this gap. …

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How humor helps build trust and connection in pediatric oncology [PODCAST]

Podcast
September 27, 2025
YouTube video

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Physician-scientist Diego R. Hijano discusses his article “How humor builds trust in pediatric oncology.” Diego shares how personal loss and his own cultural and linguistic experiences shaped his approach to care, teaching …

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Treating the economy like a crashing patient

Policy
September 27, 2025

We all know the look of a patient about to crash. The monitor has not flatlined yet, but the story is already in the vitals: The pulse is racing, the pressure is dropping, the skin is clammy.

That is the U.S. economy right now. Debt overload looks like a chronic hemorrhage. High interest rates are a sustained hypertensive crisis. Political paralysis is the family arguing in the hallway while the patient …

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Choosing a retirement plan for your medical clinic

Finance
September 27, 2025

Physicians who are also business owners have two jobs: treating patients and running their business. Hiring and keeping employees is one of the job descriptions of the latter. It is no surprise that choosing and maintaining employee benefits is not at the top of an exciting to-do list. Even if hospital systems are not your direct competition, they are often competing for …

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Expanding the Parkinson’s universe of care for patients, caregivers, clinicians, and communities

Conditions
September 27, 2025

An excerpt from The Parkinson’s Plan: A New Path to Prevention and Treatment.

The Parkinson’s universe

In 2002, we proposed a simple Parkinson’s care model. The patient is the sun, and all multidisciplinary care should orbit around the patient, not the doctors. The sun is vital but only part of the universe. It is time to expand our Parkinson’s care model.

The caregivers

If we …

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