When I began PA school, I faced an unexpected financial hurdle: I no longer qualified for employer-sponsored health insurance, and although at the time, I didn’t meet the requirements for Medicaid, I did qualify for subsidized health coverage through the marketplace. However, even with subsidies, the monthly premiums and out-of-pocket costs were still a financial strain. To afford health care and cover basic living expenses, I had to continue working …
Where a person lives far too often determines the quality of cancer care they receive and, ultimately, their chances of survival. Despite decades of progress in precision oncology, stark disparities persist between patients treated in urban academic centers and those in rural or underserved communities. A JAMA Network Open study of nearly 37,000 patients found that when rural and urban patients receive the same, protocol-driven care, their outcomes …
Leadership is often discussed in broad strokes: some leaders are structured and precise, while others are flexible and improvisational. But behind those visible styles lie quiet personal and generational histories, the emotional terrain that shaped how we learned safety, trust, and control. I’ve come to see that these histories profoundly influence how we lead and how we’re perceived as leaders, especially in health care, where the stakes are high and …
Early in the pandemic, we began using yellow cloth isolation gowns, environmentally superior, perhaps, to the paper gowns that preceded them, but not without complications. The strings at the neck were invariably tied and tightly knotted after going through the wash. If you’re a smallish doctor or nurse, the pre-tied neckline hung down around the tip of the xiphoid. I stood outside my patients’ rooms on long, weary days and …
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Public health professional Nishat Uddin discusses her article “Why culturally compassionate care matters for South Asian communities.” Nishat explains why South Asians, one of the fastest-growing U.S. populations, face disproportionate rates of …
Two years ago, Drs. Aaron Morgenstein, Corinne Sundar Rao, and Shreekant Vasudhev drew a compelling parallel between the Titanic’s tragic voyage and the looming crisis in U.S. health care. They highlighted systemic issues such as administrative egotism, outdated practices, and substandard resources, warning that without significant course corrections, the health care system was on a collision path with disaster.
Today, in 2025, the iceberg has struck, and the cracks are …
As a psychiatrist, I’m often asked by family or friends to “help,” to intervene in the mental struggles of a loved one, a friend, or even a distant acquaintance. It usually begins with kindness and concern: “Could you just talk to them?” or “Maybe you can prescribe something, you’d know what’s best.” What follows is always a difficult conversation, because I have to explain something that sounds incomprehensible to most …
In aviation, the right seat is typically reserved for the instructor. In medicine, it’s the role of the diagnostician, the mentor, the gatekeeper. I once piloted a T-37B “Tweet” trainer from the right seat, not as a student, but as someone trusted to guide. That experience shaped how I approach clinical decision-making, interdisciplinary fluency, and the choreography of care.
During a military training program, our squad faced a simulated obstacle: an …
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the cooking, the noise, the parade, the extra side dishes no one really has room for. Every year I tell my parents I want to “go bigger”: more food, more people, more traditions. And every year, my mother looks at me with a mix of love and exasperation and says some version of, “Can we please do a little less this year? My …
A few days ago, I was speaking with a high-achieving, articulate, brilliant friend, someone always up and doing, super-expressive. During our conversation, I noticed her stumbling over her words, which was quite unusual, and her fidgety hands. She was narrating a traumatic incident that had occurred to her and how it tore her apart and made her simply give up on everything, in her words, “she was done.” Throughout the …
It started with a phone call.
“Doc,” my CEO said, “do you know this doctor?”
I asked why.
“He wrote a prescription for a drug that cost $250,000 for one course.”
“You must mean $25,000,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “The insurer already paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
I assumed it had to be a miracle therapy, some one-in-a-million life-saving treatment. Then she told me the name: Acthar Gel. I nearly fell out of my …
An excerpt from Doctor Not Guilty.
The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution exists for a reason. It protects you from self-incrimination. If you remember one rule from this book, hold on to this: Never talk to the police.
By “police,” I mean every investigative agent: FBI, DEA, OIG, HHS, state boards of medicine, and investigators from the attorney general’s office. Not with a lawyer. Not without one. Not ever.
Silence …
The practice of medicine is fundamentally different from the study of medicine. Right now, you’re being rewarded for memorizing and test-taking. But being a good doctor is about communication, clinical judgment under uncertainty, and treating whole humans in context. The skills that get you through preclinical years aren’t the ones that make you excellent at the bedside. Start developing those now: learn to really listen, to tolerate ambiguity, and to …
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I learned the forbidden truth by searching “how many medical malpractice lawsuits are filed per year and how many are frivolous?” The answer is “17,000-20,000 and all are legitimate.” This answer is incongruous with seven facts.
The facts are: First, a complication causes a medical malpractice lawsuit. Some are medical errors; some are random errors-of-nature. Since an error-of-nature is not caused by negligence, a resulting lawsuit is frivolous. Second, …
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Certified financial planners Michael Lynch and Alisa Olsen discuss their article “Create your own financial vision for independence,” an excerpt from their book Taking Care of Your Future: Your Simple System for …
He spent his youth memorizing lungs. That was how he learned chest X-rays, not by chasing abnormalities, but by studying thousands of perfectly normal films until his eyes could sense when something was ever so slightly wrong. “If you don’t know normal,” he would tell residents, “you’ll never understand abnormal.”
He was a chest physician, not a radiologist, yet his skill with chest imaging became legendary. At Taipei Veterans General Hospital, …
I am a gastrointestinal medical oncologist. I am also a Black woman. When people ask me how I got here, this is the story I share. In 2011, while sitting in a medical school lecture I received an email from a classmate that read: “Open this, you should apply.” It described a program for students who are underrepresented in medicine and interested in pursuing a career in oncology. Without hesitation, …
Female athletes have redefined strength and endurance, but one common issue still hides in silence: urine leakage during training or competition.
It’s more common than most realize. In certain sports like gymnastics, trampolining, and CrossFit, the rates are particularly high. Still, many women keep silent, assuming it’s a normal side effect of being active or that nothing can be done.
As a urologist, I often meet women who are in top physical …
I thought that’s what I had to do to be successful: Wake up at 4 a.m., get after it, hustle before the world wakes up, and join the club of high performers who swear by their pre-dawn routines. So I tried it. And I was miserable. I’m talking dragging-myself-out-of-bed, foggy-brain, counting-down-the-hours-until-I-could-go-back-to-sleep kind of miserable.
As a brand-new full-time entrepreneur, I was forcing myself into a routine that felt like punishment, all …
Do you get bored when reading a boring book? Do you struggle to concentrate when you haven’t had enough sleep? Do you have difficulty following instructions, make careless mistakes and forget to return calls? Are you sometimes the last one to “get” a joke?
You may be “suffering from” with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and are “neurodivergent” and “on the spectrum.”
Today’s ASD “neurodivergence” craze has spawned at least two lucrative and …
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