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Nervous system dysregulation vs. stress: Why “just relaxing” doesn’t work

Physician

January 31, 2026

During the COVID-19 pandemic, conversations about burnout and stress exploded, particularly among health care workers. Much of the advice centered on self-care practices: taking time off, scheduling massages and spa days, practicing mindfulness, protecting your evenings, using your PTO. While these strategies are valuable, they are not the full story.

Positioning self-care as the solution to stress oversimplifies a much deeper physiological process. For many patients (and clinicians) stress is not …

U.S. opioid policy history: How politics replaced science in pain care

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD & Stephen E. Nadeau, MD

Meds

January 31, 2026

Based on our combined experience of over 70 years in patient advocacy, pain management, and behavioral neurology, we are convinced that U.S. public perception and public policy on treatment of pain have been driven almost entirely by sociopolitical and legal factors. Seldom in recent years has policy been significantly influenced by science.

The U.S. enjoyed a brief period of scientifically enlightened policy in the late 1990s through 2008. A large number …

Alex Pretti’s death: Why politics belongs in emergency medicine

Marilyn McCullum, RN

Conditions

January 31, 2026

Emergency medicine trains clinicians to recognize patterns early, anticipate deterioration, and intervene before outcomes become irreversible. We pride ourselves on seeing what others miss. Yet we are repeatedly instructed, explicitly or implicitly, to ignore the largest pattern of all. Political decisions consistently and predictably shape who arrives in our emergency departments, how sick they are, and how unsafe the environment becomes for the people expected to care for them.

If political …

Women in health care leadership: Navigating competition and mentorship

Sarah White, APRN

Conditions

January 31, 2026

In recent years, medicine has become more open about burnout, workforce shortages, and the challenges facing women in health care leadership. We write about mentorship programs, leadership pipelines, and the need to bring more women into ownership and executive roles. We celebrate women who build clinics, lead departments, and create space for others to rise.

What we talk about far less is what happens when women actually meet each other in …

Senior financial scams: a guide for primary care physicians

John C. Hagan III, MD

Conditions

January 31, 2026

In an increasingly digital world, older adults are often viewed as prime targets for financial scams. These malicious schemes exploit vulnerabilities inherent in aging, such as social isolation, cognitive decline, and trustfulness. As primary care physicians, we are in a unique position to recognize the signs of vulnerability in our older patients. Understanding the methods employed by fraudsters, the impact on victims, and how to educate them on preventative measures …

Moral courage in medical training: the power of the powerless

Kathleen Muldoon, PhD

Education

January 31, 2026

I have the great honor and privilege of coaching medical students throughout their training. In the past week, several students have shared experiences that have stayed with me: On clinical rotations, some shared stories of being referred to only as “student one” or “student two,” their humanity quietly erased. Others described managing food and housing insecurity while carrying the financial burden of medical education. Still others, particularly students with darker …

A blueprint for pediatric residency training reform

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

January 31, 2026

The false promise of efficiency

The latest punditry calls for three-year medical schools, stripped of ethics and other vital subjects, with less clinical training. The rationale? Efficiency. The result? A generation of physicians unprepared for the complexity of children’s lives.

General pediatricians themselves admit in published surveys that they “know squat” about developmental-behavioral pediatrics (DBP) after residency. Yet the proposed solution is to shorten training further. That is not reform; it is …

The gastroenterologist shortage: Why supply is falling behind demand

Brian Hudes, MD

Physician

January 31, 2026

The story of gastroenterology in 2025 is no longer about productivity or reimbursement, it’s about manpower. Hospitals and practices across the U.S. are struggling to recruit, retain, or even temporarily staff the specialists who manage digestive diseases, perform colon cancer screening, and handle emergency procedures like ERCP. What we’re facing isn’t simply a staffing issue; it’s a structural shortage decades in the making.

The shrinking pipeline of gastroenterologists

In the mid-1990s, roughly …

Waking up at 4 a.m. is not required for success [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 30, 2026

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

Physician, former health care executive, certified coach, speaker, and organizational consultant Laura Suttin discusses her article “Why the 4 a.m. wake-up call isn’t for everyone.” Laura shares her personal struggle with the …

Medical education’s blind spot: the cost of diagnostic testing

Helena Kaso, MPA

Education

January 30, 2026

Medical education has a blind spot.

We spend years teaching students to identify diseases. We drill them on symptoms, pathophysiology, and treatment algorithms. By the time they reach clinical rotations, most can rattle off the differential diagnosis for chest pain or abdominal discomfort without hesitation.

But ask a third-year student how much a CT scan costs, or whether an MRI is worth the added expense over an ultrasound, and you’ll often get …

Disruptive physician labeling: a symptom of systemic burnout

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

January 30, 2026

More physicians than ever are reaching out for support after being labeled disruptive, inefficient, delinquent, reactive, or poor communicators.

These are highly skilled, deeply committed professionals being written up for professionalism concerns, communication issues, behavior, and “reactivity.” These cases span every specialty, gender, and stage of career.

This is not a reflection of declining professionalism. It is a predictable outcome of practicing in an untenable and broken system. It is an expected …

Medicine changed me by subtraction: a physician’s evolution

Justin Sterett, MD

Physician

January 30, 2026

I used to think medicine would change me by adding things. Knowledge. Confidence. Authority. Certainty. I assumed growth would look like accumulation, more skills, more answers, more control. What actually happened was the opposite. Medicine changed me by subtraction.

When I started writing as a medical student, everything felt sharp and exposed. The hospital was loud, inefficient, and often cruel in ways no one named out loud. I wrote about scut …

Genetic mutations and racial disparities in leukemia survival

Kurt Miceli, MD, MBA

Conditions

January 30, 2026

Throughout contemporary medical discourse, health disparities among racial and ethnic groups are often attributed to systemic and structural racism. Furthermore, organizations such as the American Medical Association assert that race itself is a social construct and urge a shift away from viewing race as a “biological risk factor” toward a “deeper understanding of racism as a determinant of health.” Unfortunately, this framing rings hollow and obscures an important …

The hidden costs of the physician non-clinical career transition

Carlos N. Hernandez-Torres, MD

Physician

January 30, 2026

I entered medicine believing (perhaps naïvely) that experience mattered. Triple board certification, years of clinical practice across three specialties, and working in New York City felt like assets that would translate beyond the bedside. Like many burned-out physicians, I assumed that transitioning into a non-clinical role would be difficult, but not absurdly so.

I was wrong.

Over several years, I applied to what felt like thousands of positions in pharmaceutical companies, utilization …

Invoking your rights is the only way to survive a federal investigation [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 29, 2026

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

Nationally recognized psychiatrist, internist, and addiction medicine specialist Muhamad Aly Rifai discusses his article “Physician legal rights: What to do when agents knock.” Muhamad shares a terrifying but essential guide for any …

Why almost nobody needs a PhD anymore: an educator’s perspective

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Education

January 29, 2026

As a longtime writer and health care educator, I am sometimes approached by media reporters to discuss multiple fields. Despite the breadth of my publications in U.S. and Canadian health care, my original academic degrees (45 years ago) were in engineering subjects. Among my other hobbies, I have at times contributed as a peer reviewer in advanced science and technology journals.

Thus, it came as no surprise when I received the …

Health advice vs. medical advice: Why the difference matters

Abd-Alrahman Taha

Education

January 29, 2026

We are currently living through the greatest democratization of health information in history. You no longer need a library card or a medical degree to learn about physiology, nutrition, or disease prevention. We carry the world’s medical knowledge in our pockets, accessible with a single tap.

On the surface, this is a victory for public health. People are more aware of the importance of sleep, the risks of processed foods, and …

Why private equity is betting on employer DPC over retail

Dana Y. Lujan, MBA

Policy

January 29, 2026

Elevance Health recently reported that it expects to lose more than 180,000 fully insured group plan enrollees in 2026, with its CFO describing the strategy as “prioritizing disciplined pricing and margin integrity over volume.” UnitedHealth has made similar statements. Both are effectively walking away from the fully insured employer market, where administrative complexity no longer justifies the economics.

At the same time, private equity is pouring capital into …

From doctor to patient: a critical care physician’s ICU journey

Ian Barbash, MD

Conditions

January 29, 2026

This is the fifth New Year since the onset of COVID-19 in America. I am a pulmonary and critical care physician who had spent a decade of my life working in ICUs before I became an ICU patient myself in 2025. As a physician, husband, and father of four young children, I had been saving others. But this year, I needed to be saved.

Transitions are times for introspection. How do …

Scientific literacy in nutrition: How to read food labels

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

Conditions

January 29, 2026

Dr. Andrea Love wrote about the lack of basic scientific knowledge among the public, noting that only about 28 percent of people possess it. She highlighted the consequences of this, emphasizing how it can negatively affect people’s decisions and lives.

Many of the articles I have written have dealt with scientific knowledge in one form or another. My comments on the FDA and drug approvals, Alzheimer’s and cancer screening blood tests, …

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