The difference between a leader, a manager, and an innovator

Physician
October 7, 2025

The gimmick of the day is to make -preneur the suffix of the year. Solopreneurs. Doctorpreneurs. Digipreneurs. Trumpreneurs. It should come as no surprise then, that leaderpreneur has appeared in your latest Google search. What is a leaderpreneur, anyway, and why should anyone care? Recognizing that there are as many definitions of leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation as there are practitioners of those arts, here is my take:

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit …

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Why physicians should embrace the role of performance coaches in health care [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 6, 2025
YouTube video

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Orthopedic surgeon Michael Day discusses his article “Why it’s time for doctors to become performance coaches.” Michael explains why public trust in U.S. health care is declining and how patients are increasingly …

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Tofacitinib: a lesson in heart-immune health

Meds
October 6, 2025

When the FDA put a black box warning on tofacitinib in 2021, the message was blunt: more heart attacks, more cancers, and more blood clots. The warning came from the ORAL Surveillance trial, which followed over 4,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis already at high cardiovascular risk. Compared to TNF blockers, patients on tofacitinib had:

  • Heart attacks and strokes: About one extra event for every 111 patients treated over four years.

    • …

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The smart way to transition to direct care

Policy
October 6, 2025

Physicians tell me they want out of the insurance grind, but they’re terrified to actually do it. That fear is costing them years of autonomy they could already have.

As someone who supports both DPC and concierge physicians, I believe in the purity of the DPC model, but I also believe in practical pathways to get there. Hybrid models aren’t the compromise position; they’re the strategic bridge that makes the transition …

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7 things no one tells you about being a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s

Conditions
October 6, 2025

Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s is not just exhausting; it is emotionally disorienting. You lose pieces of someone you love, slowly, in a thousand small ways. And while books, doctors, and websites talk about the medical side of Alzheimer’s, there are things they do not prepare you for like the guilt, the grief, the unexpected laughter, and how much it can break your heart. If you are in this role …

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Bearing witness to the gun violence epidemic

Policy
October 6, 2025

I stare down at the ground below me, closing my eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears. “Push it down. Deep breath in. Breathe it out … slowly … again …” The mantra I say in my head whenever it suddenly becomes too much.

I open my eyes to the view of the ground, unwillingly taking a snapshot of the view that surrounds me. Like the slow click of a …

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A doctor’s struggle with burnout and boundaries

Physician
October 6, 2025

I had been hearing so much about burnout in medicine; and one day, I realized it had crept up on me. It began at my mother’s funeral, when an acquaintance, a former family friend, approached me asking me to examine her painful toe. I tried to avoid her, yet I could not say no. Through my grief and exhaustion, conditioned by years of striving to live a life of purpose, …

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Why physicians with ADHD are struggling with burnout despite success [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 5, 2025
YouTube video

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Certified coach Michael Carlini discusses his article “Why physicians with ADHD are burning out.” Michael explains how high-IQ physicians often mask their ADHD symptoms through hyper-organization, perfectionism, and hyperfocus, which allows them …

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Unhooking from the ego in medicine

Physician
October 5, 2025

These days, getting spun out into a state of worry and panic is just a click away: Turn on any device for constant updates on the chaos around us.

Adding to this, on a personal level, the last six years have been the most difficult and transformative period of my life. I had never imagined that I would experience and recover from the darkness of depression and suicidality six years ago, …

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Why pharmacist burnout is a patient safety issue

Conditions
October 5, 2025

Behind every prescription safely dispensed stands a pharmacist making dozens of clinical decisions under mounting pressure. What happens when that pressure becomes unbearable? When the professionals who are the last line of defense against medication harm are pushed to their breaking point, patient safety breaks with them. This crisis is real and it is often invisible.

The invisible epidemic

Surveys and workplace reports repeatedly show that large numbers of pharmacists experience burnout …

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Why doctors strike: a matter of survival

Physician
October 5, 2025

Ever been so tired you forgot your own name? I remember a junior doctor on strike in London who told me exactly that. Thirty-six hours awake, stumbling into the children’s ward, staring at a prescription pad. “I couldn’t even remember my own name,” he said, “let alone the right antibiotic dose.”

That was not about wages. That was about survival, his and the children’s.

Yet the story always gets told the same …

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Stop trying to lead doctors like corporate employees

Physician
October 5, 2025

Everywhere in American medicine today, you hear the word leadership. Hospitals advertise leadership programs. AMCs hold leadership retreats. Colleagues are urged to “develop as leaders.” Yet when you talk to practicing doctors (the ones actually seeing patients), most will tell you all they want is to do their work, fairly scheduled, with decent colleagues, and without interference.

That is the paradox of the physician leader. Everyone talks about leadership, but almost …

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The false link between Tylenol and autism

Policy
October 5, 2025

The 9/22 White House press conference regarding acetaminophen raises two serious concerns. First, the scientific accuracy of the purported link between acetaminophen and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is dubious. Additionally, the norms of public communication concerning whether a President should offer medical advice existed for good reason. The heads of CMS, NIH, and FDA were present, but did not dispute in real time the essential claim that Tylenol causes autism.

Second, …

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The paradox of letting your children go

Conditions
October 5, 2025

I am writing this on a flight, somewhere between Los Angeles and Boston. Next to me, a young couple is tending to their ten-month-old baby: passing a bottle, bouncing her when she fusses, trading weary but tender smiles. Their world is diapers and nap schedules, the endless rhythm of caregiving.

My world today looks very different. I am taking my youngest child to college. With this trip, all three of my …

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How AI is transforming health care with real-world data insights [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 4, 2025
YouTube video

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Health care executive Sujay Jadhav discusses his article “How AI is revolutionizing health care through real-world data.” Sujay explains how artificial intelligence tools like machine learning and natural language processing are turning …

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Rethinking the value of the annual physical

Physician
October 4, 2025

We were walking up the fairway on the ninth hole when one of my patients asked, “Larry, when should I come in for my annual?” I had a seven-iron in hand, breeze at my back, and I answered without thinking: “Doesn’t matter.” He looked at me like I had just duffed a wedge. To him, it sounded like I did not care. In a way, I suppose I mishit that …

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The generational trauma of the health care system

Conditions
October 4, 2025

Health care often talks about burnout as if it were a recent discovery. But for many clinicians, the exhaustion they feel did not begin with them. It was inherited, passed down through a system that normalizes overwork, silence, and sacrifice as the price of practicing medicine.

Every generation of providers has heard the same message: This is just how it is. Long shifts, missed meals, unsafe staffing ratios, and silence in …

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Leadership levers to reduce burnout

Conditions
October 4, 2025

Burnout isn’t a personal shortcoming; it’s a system warning. A peer-reviewed Annals of Internal Medicine cost estimate pegs the annual bill for physician burnout near $4.6 billion in turnover and reduced clinical time, an operational risk with human consequences. As an executive who works across clinical and administrative teams, I see this as both a human tragedy and an operational failure that demands leadership attention. The good news: There …

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A mother’s question about PCOS and her son’s autism

Conditions
October 4, 2025

I am the mother of a 37-year-old son diagnosed with autism and Crohn’s disease. He also has serious intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), requiring round-the-clock care and support. I also have a medical history of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and took fertility medication to conceive him. For years, I have watched the autism diagnosis rate climb while public discourse remained fixated on single causes or stigmatizing narratives. But we are …

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A pharmacist’s lesson in patient care

Conditions
October 4, 2025

As a pharmacist, I have spent years behind the counter filling prescriptions, answering questions, and giving quick consultations. Most of my days felt routine: scanning barcodes, checking drug interactions, and moving from one patient to the next. But one encounter changed the way I saw my profession forever.

It was a quiet afternoon when an elderly woman walked into the pharmacy. She handed me a prescription for blood pressure medication, but …

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