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Cancer treatment and sexual health: the conversation we need to have

Conditions

April 3, 2025

When we think of cancer treatment, we often focus on the immediate goals: Shrinking tumors, stopping the spread of the disease, and ultimately aiming for a cure. What doesn’t get as much attention, but is just as important, is how cancer treatments can affect a patient’s sexual health and reproductive future.

Many cancer patients, particularly younger ones, are often left in the dark about how their treatment could impact their sexual …

Medicine’s mental health crisis: Why the system is failing us

Robert C. Smith, MD

Conditions

April 3, 2025

An excerpt from Has Medicine Lost Its Mind?: Why Our Mental Health System Is Failing Us and What Should Be Done to Cure It.

One of society’s great issues is who decides what science does—the public or science. For example, the populace has taken control and been clear that it does not want science to create human beings in a laboratory or construct computers that run the world. Once …

How endometriosis affects fertility and what you can do [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 2, 2025

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Fertility specialist Oluyemisi Famuyiwa discusses her article, “Endometriosis and fertility: What every woman should know.” She explores how endometriosis, an inflammatory condition affecting 10 percent of reproductive-age women, disrupts fertility through pelvic …

How hospitals are quietly taking control of physicians

Allan Dobzyniak, MD

Physician

April 2, 2025

Doctor, if you have recently had occasion to be granted a visit with upper hospital management in the plush executive suite, most surely it was you who stood out quite conspicuously. Being greeted, hopefully politely, by one of the administrative secretaries, you were asked to be seated and wait along with others—consultants, lower-level management, salesmen, business associates, insurance executives, and maybe even golf buddies. Notable was that you, the physician, …

10 ways health care might be killing you (and what you can do about it)

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Physician

April 2, 2025

Health care is meant to heal, but what if it’s quietly doing the opposite? While we rely on medical professionals, hospitals, and treatments to keep us healthy, the system has hidden dangers that can put lives at risk. For every life saved, countless others are harmed due to systemic failures, personal oversight, or deep-rooted inequities.

This article will examine ten critical reasons why health care can become deadly …

Through the lens of COVID: a radiologic technologist’s story

Kyle Wells, RT

Conditions

April 2, 2025

I’ve been an X-ray and CT technologist for almost ten years, and I’ve always taken pride in my work. But nothing could have prepared me—or any of us—for what the COVID-19 pandemic brought. It wasn’t just the virus itself; it was the way it exposed the cracks in our health care system, the way it pushed us all to our limits, and the way it changed how we saw our …

The unstoppable rise of health care administrators: a cautionary song

Alfred J. Padilla, MD

Physician

April 2, 2025

April 23, 2025, is Administrative Professionals Day!

Administrators, especially in health care, are a rapidly growing demographic who believe they are unsung heroes deserving of recognition. In an attempt to remedy this situation, I submit for your consideration the following song, to the tune of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall:

One administrator is all, he runs the hospital.
Let’s open the door, and …

Data accuracy failures in health care [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 1, 2025

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Internist and psychiatrist Muhamad Aly Rifai discusses his article, “How data accuracy failures are costing lives and money in health care.” He explores the consequences of inaccurate data in health care, from …

From burnout to balance: 5 stages of career transformation

Kara Pepper, MD

Physician

April 1, 2025

Not long ago, my husband and I had a sobering realization: If we did not make major changes, we would regret spending our best years using every ounce of our energy on work. We accepted that exhaustion from our jobs was normal. Burnout became our status quo, and even a sabbatical didn’t create lasting well-being.

Unwilling to live with the regret of overworking, we ultimately made major changes and …

The cost of presence: a lesson in listening

Kathleen Muldoon, PhD

Conditions

April 1, 2025

Last week, a mother of six children—four of whom have disabilities—made the trek to the health care campus where I’m a faculty member to share her story. She’s making this trip weekly on Thursdays to give the same presentation twice in succession for a duration of an hour each time, for five weeks in a row. That’s ten times telling her story to a faceless crowd of interprofessional health care …

The unexpected truth behind these misdiagnosed medical cases

Janet Tamaren, MD

Conditions

April 1, 2025

I worked in rural health in Kentucky for twenty years, then in urgent treatment centers in Denver. All sorts of patients pop up in primary care and in UTCs. Most have easily identified complaints: UTI, sinusitis, flu. Others are there for regular refills, for hypertension or cholesterol meds. There were a few patients I remember whose presentations were less straightforward, whose diagnoses were more elusive.

The following two patients presented with …

Why racism in health care is still an emergency

Seema Pattni, MD

Physician

April 1, 2025

“I want to be white,” he said.

I didn’t know how to respond.

I was quiet.

He was serious, waiting for my reply.

He was only 8 years old, in the hospital with an asthma flare-up.

I had asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I wished I hadn’t.

I’ve thought a lot about his answer in the …

Why it’s OK to feel conflicted about motherhood [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 31, 2025

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Psychotherapist and author Margo Lowy discusses her article, “Maternal ambivalence: the side of motherhood no one talks about.” She explores the often unspoken emotional complexities of motherhood, where love and frustration coexist. Margo delves into …

Hospitals are driving revenue and improving outcomes with telehealth

Chris Gallagher, MD

Tech

March 31, 2025

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth has become a household word; Americans have increasingly turned to virtual platforms to connect with their doctors. But what has not become widely known is the role telehealth is playing in hospitals and emergency rooms across the country. From virtual neurology and cardiology to maternal-fetal medicine and behavioral health, specialists are remoting into patient rooms to address life-threatening symptoms—and, in the process, they are reducing …

Criminalizing care: How the system turned on physicians

Muhamad Aly Rifai, MD

Physician

March 31, 2025

Physicians are healers; they were not meant to be hunted. Yet in modern America, the very system that once revered physicians has turned against them, weaponizing regulations and laws into weapons and transforming healers into criminals. The Controlled Substances Act, health care fraud statutes, and a labyrinth of federal regulations have ensnared countless physicians in a trap of legal peril, branding them as fraudsters when their only crime was dedication …

A tribute to the unsung heroes of medicine

Aarti Patel, MD

Physician

March 31, 2025

Every day, over a million doctors across the nation rise with a singular, noble purpose: to heal and to help. This isn’t a calling pursued for recognition or praise—it’s a commitment rooted in a deep, unwavering care for others. From family physicians who anchor communities to pediatricians who safeguard our children, from surgeons who wield precision in the operating room to specialists unraveling the toughest medical enigmas, these …

Why hand washing isn’t enough to stop infections in hospitals [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 30, 2025

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Emergency physician W. Frank Peacock discusses his article, “What if a doctor didn’t wash their hands between patients?” He explores the critical role of hand hygiene in preventing hospital-acquired infections while exposing …

How price transparency fails patients and what insurers must reveal next

Christine Ward, MD

Physician

March 30, 2025

In his deluge of executive orders, Trump once again is focusing on health care cost transparency.

Efforts to open the lock on health care costs began in 2019 under the Trump administration with mandated publication of hospital price lists, called chargemasters. These price lists are arbitrary, as they have no relation to the contracted …

Why systemic thinking can transform both therapy and medicine

Maire Daugharty, MD

Physician

March 30, 2025

In his book Cross Pollinations: The Marriage of Science and Poetry, Nabhan illustrates the interconnection between thinking across varied fields and how one specifically might inform the other. He is by no means the first or only thinker to harness looking across disciplines. This approach has certainly also informed the world of psychotherapy. The unifying glue, however, is time and space for reflection, to consider leisurely, to let the …

How the system hunts physicians who refuse to kneel

Atharva Joshi, MD

Physician

March 30, 2025

They never said it outright. Not at first.

They didn’t have to.

I was a physician at the edge of the Republic, serving those the system had long since forgotten. When the last doctors left, I remained. I healed. I endured. I became necessary.

And for that, the system turned.

Not with conviction, but suspicion.

Not with verdict, but process.