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The silent patient experience in the exam room

Michele Luckenbaugh

Conditions

April 16, 2026

Doctor, you see only the faint visible smile
on my exterior, my hand reaches out to shake yours
as you enter the space.

But you cannot see the “me” within,
the fear, the stress, the anxiety
that circulates inside me.

These emotions swirl within,
poking and prodding,
they hang like a weighted chain
about my heart.

I guess one could say
I am an imposter,
a person in disguise.

But couldn’t the same be said of you?
I guess you were trained
to keep your …

A nurse’s final reflection on life, death, and regrets

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

Conditions

April 16, 2026

I sat up on that thin mattress in a nursing home. My earthly possessions were gone. The house I loved so much and worked so hard to buy, built in 1918, was no longer mine. I had taken a second job just to move out of the dilapidated trailer my husband had brought me to. I felt surrounded by poverty and hopelessness while he showed no ambition to leave. My …

Recognizing structural drift and institutional failure in health care

Tiffiny Black, DM, MPA, MBA

Conditions

April 16, 2026

Most institutional failures appear sudden. A hospital collapses under regulatory scrutiny. A leadership crisis erupts. A safety breakdown exposes systemic weaknesses that had remained invisible for years. When these moments occur, they are often described as unexpected. But in complex systems like health care, failure rarely arrives without warning. The warning signs are almost always present long before the crisis becomes visible. The challenge is that institutions often learn to …

Why your patient isn’t filling that prescription (and won’t tell you) [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 15, 2026

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

What happens when a patient can’t afford the treatment you prescribe but is too embarrassed to say so? Health care executive Adam Cunningham joins the show to unpack the devastating ripple effects of …

The hidden toll of medical debt on patient health and survival

Adam Cunningham

Policy

April 15, 2026

One hundred million Americans carry medical debt. Research published in JAMA Network Open found that medical debt is associated with higher mortality across every leading cause of death, including suicide. A national study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that people carrying debt burden are more than three times as likely to attempt suicide. Sixteen percent of suicides in this country involve a financial crisis. I do not write …

How one doctor navigated orthopedic residency while pregnant

Christen Russo, MD

Physician

April 15, 2026

The Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society (RJOS) Dr. Jessi Block Courage Award is awarded annually to an RJOS member who demonstrates strength and integrity in the face of everyday obstacles. The definition of courage is “the ability to do something that frightens one” and “strength in the face of pain or grief.” Courage is a conscious choice and a willingness to confront a difficult situation. As health care professionals, we become …

National Nurses Week needs better nursing recognition

Brian Sutter

Conditions

April 15, 2026

I was recently speaking with an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse, and she described a moment that perfectly captures the weight of her profession. She was managing a post-surgical patient whose vitals were quietly deteriorating. Before the monitor alarms even registered the crisis, she had anticipated the drop, prepped the pressors, and calmly updated the attending physician. Through sheer clinical vigilance, she held the fragile line between stabilization and a …

Natural disaster trauma requires mental health planning

Kevin

Conditions

April 15, 2026

Super Typhoon Sinlaku got the coverage it deserved, the satellite loops, the wind speed updates, the landfall reports over the Northern Marianas. Every wobble in the eye wall drew a headline. No one was talking about what was happening inside people’s bodies. I have sat with patients days after a storm passed, experiencing blood pressure that will not budge and hands that will not stop shaking, and the sky has …

The reluctant achiever: Navigating identity in medical training

Jack Tiller

Education

April 15, 2026

I. Intake notes

Subject presents as a high-functioning adult with a long history of academic success and an unusual number of existential questions for someone who technically has their life together. Primary characteristics include intellectual curiosity, restlessness, and a persistent suspicion that the conventional path laid before them (while impressive) might also be some kind of elaborate trap. The subject is not failing by any objective metric. In fact, the opposite …

How imposter syndrome affects high-achieving professionals

Ritu Goel, MD

Conditions

April 15, 2026

He had just been named a partner. The youngest in the firm’s history. The first thing he said when he sat down in my office was, “I think they made a mistake.” I have heard some version of this more times than I can count, from physicians, attorneys, founders, and C-suite executives. People whose resumes would make anyone’s jaw drop, yet who live with a persistent, quiet dread that someone …

The medical practice marketing metrics that actually matter

Uday Rajaram

Finance

April 15, 2026

Every month, thousands of physician practices receive a marketing report. It has charts. It has graphs. It shows impressive numbers moving in the right direction. And in most cases, it tells the practice almost nothing about whether their marketing is actually working. After managing paid digital campaigns for cosmetic and aesthetic medical practices, I have seen this pattern repeatedly: practices spending $3,000 to $8,000 per month on marketing, receiving polished …

Finding humanity in medicine after a sudden illness

Salina Mansukhani

Conditions

April 15, 2026

The morning my mother passed away began like any other. She was getting ready for work. She finished her morning chai and just stepped out of the shower with the sunlight filling the bedroom. There was nothing unusual about that morning that was particularly alarming. And then, in a moment so small I almost missed it, she paused and pressed a hand to her back. “I don’t feel right,” she …

Silence isn’t neutrality: Why medical students can’t wait to find their voice [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 14, 2026

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

What happens when medical students witness dehumanization during clinical rotations but feel too powerless to speak up? Kathleen Muldoon, a certified coach and professor in medical education, joins the show to unpack why …

Coping with a childhood type 1 diabetes diagnosis

Howard Steinberg

Conditions

April 14, 2026

An excerpt from Confessions of a Problem Seeker: My Lifetime Journey From Busy Brain To Loving Heart.

In his own intuitive way, with only a second-grade education, my dad knew something was not right. Just hours after peeing in a paper cup at our pediatrician’s office, the doctor called my mom at my father’s butcher shop to inform her I had juvenile diabetes (now referred to as type 1 diabetes). …

The ROI of ambient AI in health care and autonomous coding

Pat Williams

Tech

April 14, 2026

When ambient listening and generative AI first entered the clinical mainstream, the value proposition was simple: Reduce documentation burden and give clinicians their evenings back. That promise resonated. Burnout was rising. After-hours charting had become normalized. Health systems needed relief. And ambient documentation delivered.

But as deployments scaled from pilot projects to enterprise rollouts, the conversation matured. CFOs and revenue cycle leaders began asking a harder question: Beyond time savings, what …

Artificial intelligence is changing medical writing today

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Tech

April 14, 2026

The moment was small, almost trivial. I handed my daughter her polished curriculum vitae (CV), clear, structured, and professionally phrased. All the information had been distilled and reorganized from her resume. She looked at it for a second longer than expected, then asked a single question: “ChatGPT?” I said yes, and felt an unexpected flicker of shame. Not because I had done something wrong. Not because I had tried to …

A humorous parody of medical specialties and the modern patient

Sidney J. Winawer, MD

Physician

April 14, 2026

Prologue

As a practicing gastroenterologist for more than 50 years, now emeritus, I was privileged to have had colleagues with expertise in many specialties to whom I could refer patients. Since my career began, the constellation of these specialists has increased considerably. Patients often find themselves moving from one “ologist” to another, each very skilled but focused on a particular organ system. From the patient’s perspective, maneuvering through the complexities of …

Managing food allergy anxiety through diagnostic testing

Tamara Hubbard and Gary Falcetano

Conditions

April 14, 2026

Food allergies affect roughly 8 to 10 percent of U.S. children and adults, and prevalence has risen steadily over the past two decades. Beyond the impacts on physical health, families managing food allergies experience persistent stress and vigilance preparing for unknown risks, whether it’s label reading, preparing for school, or going to restaurants or social gatherings. Seasonal allergies, in particular, have also been linked to generalized …

How generative AI in health care is changing patient expectations

Cybil Sierra Stingl, MD and Robert M. Kaplan, PhD

Tech

April 14, 2026

On a busy call shift as a resident doctor at Stanford, I have heard versions of the same sentence more than once: “That’s reassuring. ChatGPT said the same thing.” In clinic, patients increasingly admit they left visits hesitant to ask clarifying questions, then turned to a generative AI tool to explain their diagnosis in plainer language. Some return reassured; others come back more uncertain. But the pattern is unmistakable. Patients …

Oral Wegovy sounds easy, but the reality is more complicated [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 13, 2026

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

Is the new oral Wegovy pill a breakthrough or a risk most patients never hear about? Shiv K. Goel, an internal medicine and functional medicine physician, joins the show to unpack his KevinMD …

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