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Metabolic health educator Kevin Whitt discusses his article “Insulin resistance is not a disease: a metabolic reframe.” Kevin argues that the skyrocketing rates of Type 2 diabetes are not the result of …
Insulin resistance is a survival mechanism, not a broken system [PODCAST]
Regina Townsend, founder of The Broken Brown Egg, writes that “trying to decide if you can emotionally afford the cost of building a Black or Brown family in a world that is concurrently showing you how low they are valued adds additional weight to an already heavy situation.”
Townsend emphasizes the importance of recognizing the lived experiences of women of color: “Infertility doesn’t see color, but my color …
Debunking 4 myths about fertility treatments for women of color
Last year, a 45-year-old woman walked into my screening center in Laurel, MD. She was fit, healthy, and had no symptoms whatsoever. She just wanted peace of mind, the kind of baseline health data that her annual physical could not provide. Ninety minutes later, her whole-body MRI revealed a kidney tumor she did not know existed. No pain. No blood in her urine. Nothing to suggest she was harboring a …
Whole-body MRI screening: a radiologist’s guide to preventive scans
As a pediatric cardiologist, I have spent my career watching children grow. During clinic visits, we track their height, weight, and milestones. We also sit with families and ask what makes their children smile. We might send a toddler to physical therapy for gross motor delay while we also encourage her love of art or music. Years of listening to parents share what their child enjoys has taught me that …
How competency-based education is driving medical education reform
In the thick of the opioid epidemic, there is this widespread fear called “opiophobia,” which basically means people, including patients and doctors, are scared to use opioids even when they are really needed for serious medical issues. This fear comes from the idea that even a short stint on opioids for acute pain, like after surgery, often leads to addiction or worse. John A. Bumpus’s 2025 review in ACS Pharmacology …
The truth about short-term opioid prescribing and opioid use disorder
If you trust the titans of industry, and I do not, we are led to believe that, just around the proverbial corner, the equivalent of C-3PO will arrive to improve health care. How wonderful!
You might remember the fussy, shiny droid, the golden companion of R2-D2 in the Star Wars films. Fluent in over six million forms of communication, C-3PO bubbled with personality, …
AI in health care: Why artificial intelligence cannot replace human empathy
I was trying to be cool, so I recently joined a social media challenge with a simple prompt: “Create a caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me.”
As a hospitalist, physician executive, and burnout architect, my digital footprint is deep. I talk about systemic health care reform, the psychology of exhaustion, and the structural “blueprints” needed to …
AI bias in healthcare: When algorithms erase Black professionals
Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) continues to be a solid option for people dealing with chronic pain that just will not budge with the usual approaches like medications, physical therapy, or injections. It is a minimally invasive way to deliver low-level electrical pulses through electrodes placed in the epidural space near the spinal cord, helping to change how pain signals reach the brain and often providing relief in areas like the …
How spinal cord stimulation offers relief for chronic pain
In the sterile quiet of an exam room, a physician faces a patient recounting a history of profound trauma. To a layperson, the story is bone-chilling. To the seasoned clinician, it can occasionally and guiltily feel like data. We call it burnout or compassion fatigue, but biologically, it is something more fundamental. The human brain has a finite capacity for empathy.
Our neural circuitry evolved for small tribes, not for a …
Compassion fatigue in medicine: Why the brain numbs trauma
In 2016, Lauren Gambill wrote on KevinMD about being told, “She is not yours to grieve,” after a patient’s death. The message was clear: Grief was weakness, and physicians were expected to suppress it. Nearly a decade later, Arthur Lazarus argued that medical training does not change personality; it reveals scaffolding. He cited a “Blue Bloods” episode where Danny Reagan dismissed a racist watch leader and former cop with the …
The danger of detachment: How medical training reveals character
Families often ask me what “healthy aging” really means. They expect actionable answers: target lab values, a 30-minute exercise prescription, or a strict dietary plan. In modern health care, we deliver these metrics with precision, yet our patients continue to struggle. That gap is not a failure of compliance. It is a failure of imagination. Recently, I found myself contemplating a different kind of prescription while attending a piano recital …
The rhythm of healthy aging: Moving beyond health care metrics
An excerpt from 50 Studies Every Hospitalist Should Know.
Debbie Lin Teodorescu, MD, MEng, a cardiologist, and Hugo Torres, MD, MPH, an endocrinologist, authored this article.
The DOSE trial provided good insight into the dosage and frequency for administering loop diuretics in patients presenting with acute decompensated heart failure. Physicians can prescribe intravenous loop diuretics with confidence that their decision is evidence-based, efficacious, and safe.
Research questions
Among patients with hemodynamically …
Managing acute heart failure: evidence from the DOSE trial
Defensive medicine grows where fear rules. Value-based health care grows where judgment, trust, and outcomes matter. That is the clash now facing many doctors. On paper, health systems say they want high-value care, better outcomes, lower waste, and patient-centered decisions. In real life, many doctors practice in an environment shaped by needless complaints, crushing legal defense costs, underfunded services, regulator overreach, and instant reputational damage through online and social media. …
The clash between defensive medicine and value-based health care
What does it really mean to care for someone? I asked myself that question during my first months in medical school, when I realized that medicine was not only about science or protocols. It was about people, each one carrying their own culture, beliefs, and stories. And sometimes those stories mattered as much as the diagnosis itself.
One of my earliest experiences was with a woman from a rural community who …
Cultural humility in medicine: Why respect matters as much as science
I had a mini epiphany recently. I realized there are three basic categories of time:
Why physicians get stuck in productive and numbing cycles
“Dr. Baban? Dr. Baban?”
His slurred voice rasps across the room, weak but insistent, cutting through chiming monitors, buzzing fluorescent lights, and the screeching pager slung next to the empty gnaw in my stomach. I freeze where I stand, one hand scratching out post-operative orders on the last emergency surgery of the day, the other midway to the nursing station phone, grasping the silenced pager. My eyes sweep over the recovery …
A resident’s first surgery: When the patient teaches the doctor
I do not watch the news anymore. I do not listen to it on the radio. I do not even read about it online. But every once in a while, I will catch myself reading an article on Google News on my iPad. I, too, fall prey to clickbait on occasion. But, for the most part, I avoid the news: local, regional, state, national, and even international. It is too …
What world leaders can learn from diverse medical teams
I received a lifetime certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) in 1983. Since then, I have not participated in any of the Board’s “Maintenance of Certification” (MOC) programs.
I have taken the continuation of my medical education seriously, and have performed more than the number of hours required for my state licensure, professional liability insurability, and AMA continuing education recognition awards. Additionally, I have taught medical students and …
The controversy over Maintenance of Certification for grandfathered physicians
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Pediatrician and certified coach Jessie Mahoney discusses her article “Dealing with physician negative feedback.” Jessie validates the pain that comes with criticism, noting that it hurts not because physicians are weak, but …
Criticism stings because doctors care deeply about their work [PODCAST]
The real magic in chronic pain care isn’t just the pills or the procedures, but it’s the connection between doctor and patient. When a physician shows genuine empathy and truly listens, patients feel seen, trust deepens, and outcomes improve in ways that often outshine standard treatments. Take this striking study: Among more than 1,400 people with chronic low back pain, those cared for by highly empathic doctors ended up with …
Why patient-centered care transforms chronic pain management
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