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Why purpose—not productivity—defines a physician’s success

Physician

March 15, 2025

During the session, my partner leading the discussion asked, “What is your purpose?” One of the physician owners confidently replied, “To replace hips and knees.” The facilitator then asked everyone in the room, “How many of you see this as your main purpose?” Two more people raised their hands, both of whom were also physician owners of the practice.

We had been invited to work with a local orthopedic …

From heroes to burnout: How we failed our frontline health workers

Tom Lawry

Conditions

March 15, 2025

An excerpt from Health Care Nation.

Of all the lessons learned from fighting a pandemic, none was more frightening or important than discovering how dependent the system is on how we treat our doctors, nurses, and frontline caregivers.

They were already in short supply, with burnout on the rise, when the pandemic hit. As multiple waves of COVID-19 variants washed over us, frontline health workers stepped in …

Hidden infections: Are bats a missing link in the Countess of Chester tragedy?

Susan McIntyre

Conditions

March 15, 2025

As you should know, bats carry Histoplasma capsulatum and shed it in their feces (along with Aspergillus and other fungi, bacteria, and viruses). They evolved to deal with the photophobia and tinnitus it causes by hunting at night using echolocation. Bats are protected in the U.K. to the point that it is illegal to remove or block them from their roost. They even have bay colonies in royal residences—which would …

Embracing compassion in family medicine [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 14, 2025

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

Family physician Dan Muntean discusses the article, “The heart of family medicine: a doctor’s journey of compassion and care.” In this episode, Dan shares his personal journey through 30 years of practice …

Leading with care: How health care leadership can transform patient and provider well-being

Joshua D. Hartzell, MD

Physician

March 14, 2025

Is caring the missing ingredient in health care leadership?

As physicians and health care professionals, we are called to care for patients, their families, and trainees. Yet, the health care team is often not cared for by leaders. This has resulted in staggering rates of burnout. It has led to many physicians and nurses leaving the field, creating more stress on an already overworked workforce. The question is: How …

The hidden crisis in health care: How corporate greed is destroying patient care

Bettina Reed, FNP-BC

Conditions

March 14, 2025

I grew up in a medical family, primary care. I’ve worked in the medical field for 40 years, from the front office to the back, lab to radiology. I’ve been a registered nurse for 33 years and a family nurse practitioner for 30 years. I have worked in hospitals, private practices, federally qualified health centers (FQHC), hospice, and corporate health. I am deeply passionate about my calling—caring and advocating for …

How AI is revolutionizing health care through the lens of Alice in Wonderland

Neil Anand, MD

Tech

March 14, 2025

Once upon a time, in the curious land of Wonderland, there lived a physician named Alice. On a curiouser and curiouser day, Alice found herself tumbling down the digital rabbit hole into a fantastical realm called Algorithmia, a land where the wonders of artificial intelligence (AI) shaped the very fabric of life. Guided by the enigmatic Mad Hatter, Alice encountered three peculiar AI Cheshire Cats—Transforma (transformers), Baye (Bayesian methods), and …

How a customer relationship management tool (CRM) can help physicians regain control and beat burnout

Marissa Caudill, MD

Physician

March 14, 2025

As physicians, we dedicate our lives to helping others. We spend years training to diagnose, treat, and care for patients with a dream of feeling valued and helpful. Then, one day we find ourselves feeling increasingly overwhelmed by administrative work, struggling to keep up with patient communication, and feeling disconnected from the people we set out to serve. The reality is that many of us are caught in a system …

Why I refuse to hide my emotions in a world afraid of love

Dr. Damane Zehra

Physician

March 14, 2025

I’m only sharing this story today to illustrate something about myself and my perspective on love: being expressive with it.

I am not discussing only romantic love here. I’m talking about the affection we have for so many individuals around us, including our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, coworkers, neighbors, pets, and even strangers.

Sometimes we fall in love with a random person’s actions, something they say, the way …

Compassionate solutions for food allergies in air travel [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 13, 2025

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

Lianne Mandelbaum, a leading advocate for airline safety measures to protect food-allergic passengers, discusses the article, “Navigating the uncertainty of food allergies in air travel: a call for compassion and change.” In …

The missing link in medical malpractice: a strategy to reduce lawsuits

Howard Smith, MD

Physician

March 13, 2025

Despite the heralded To Err Is Human, there is still no effective risk management strategy to prevent medical liability. Past discussions on KevinMD have explored a risk-management strategy that differentiates medical errors from random errors of nature with 95 percent confidence. Like any decision-making method, this strategy has weaknesses that deserve mention.

Weaknesses of the strategy

The truth about burnout in medicine: a journey of gladiators, night shifts, and humanity

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Physician

March 13, 2025

Becoming a doctor is often seen as a noble quest—a path filled with sacrifice, resilience, and the ultimate reward of helping others. We all start the same way: pre-med studies, endless exams, and the grueling four years of medical school. It’s a journey filled with sleepless nights, skipped meals, and cramming obscure diseases into our already overloaded brains. But we keep going, fueled by the dream of finally being called …

How a law school elective changed my perspective on medicine

Kelly Montgomery

Education

March 13, 2025

I was approaching the final rotations of my third year in medical school when it came time to create my fourth-year schedule. I wanted to participate in electives that aligned with my passions for advocacy and addressing health disparities but were also unique. That’s when I stumbled upon a few courses at a nearby law school that explored the intersection of law and medicine.

Though I knew the course was offered …

What The Far Side taught me about belonging in science

Ryan McCarthy, MD

Physician

March 13, 2025

Perpetually late to the game, I was watching The Crown on my laptop Friday night, the wonderful episode set in the summer of 1969, when astronauts landed on the moon. While the world gazed into the heavens, series creator Peter Morgan looked around here on Earth and asked, What does it all mean?

Contrasted against this crowning scientific achievement was the Duke of Edinburgh’s personal crisis of faith. When NASA launched, …

Rising health insurance costs challenge small medical practices [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 12, 2025

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

Family physician Tony Gerk discusses the article, “Even medical practices aren’t immune from the high cost of employer-provided health insurance.” In this episode, Tony explains the challenges small medical practices face due …

How to write essays that get you into medical school

Natalie Enyedi

Education

March 12, 2025

How do I get accepted to medical school? This is the question at the forefront of every premedical student’s mind. As the competitiveness of each medical school application cycle increases and it feels like all those applying have cured cancer, dedicated their entire lives to some amazing community service effort, achieved a perfect MCAT score, and found time to invent a time machine, the importance of good writing and weaving …

The cost of caring: How medicine is shortening the lives of women physicians

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

March 12, 2025

A recent Time magazine article, “Women Live Longer Than Men—But Not in Medicine,” confirmed what many of us have long felt in our bones: Being a woman in medicine comes at a cost.

A staggering one.

Women physicians are dying younger than male physicians. Younger than women in the general population.

And that’s just what the mortality data shows.

The morbidity—the chronic health issues, the …

How copy and paste in EHRs is hurting patient care

Ben Hourani, MD, MBA

Tech

March 12, 2025

The electronic health record (EHR) has solved the illegibility issue of handwritten notes, but the downside and unintended consequences have been of equal or greater importance. The cult of the EHR “copy and paste” (CP) club in hospital care makes defending a Medicare billing audit a daunting task should a physician be required to justify their level of professional billing codes. The much more important issue, however, is that patient …

The hidden financial burdens shaping modern medicine

Sarah Fashakin

Education

March 12, 2025

Imagine this: Two attending surgeons undertake a surgical procedure on a patient. The surgical residents have draped the patient; the surgical tech and the circulating nurse are ready to begin the operation. The surgical attendings enter the OR, scrub in, and move to the next order of business: “How are we going to bill for this procedure?”

Often, there is an unspoken—and spoken—consensus that the medical field is a lucrative one. …

Unpacking the Faustian bargain of modern medicine [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 11, 2025

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

Internal medicine physician Corinne Rao discusses the article, “The Faustian bargain of modern medicine.” In this episode, Corinne explores the modern health care system’s trade-offs, comparing the traditional independence of private practice …

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