Why the fear of drugs in pregnancy can do its own harm

Medications
July 18, 2026

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Division of Psychiatry until 2024.

Martha Rosenberg: Recent news items about Tylenol and SSRIs in pregnancy can bring up memories of thalidomide and DES scares. Can you offer perspective?

Marc Stone: The thalidomide crisis was horrifying and so graphic, but the drug was never approved in the U.S., and there were only a few …

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Why the fear of drugs in pregnancy can do its own harm

Is evidence-based medicine quietly failing physicians?

Physician
July 18, 2026

In my second year of residency in 1997, I was introduced to mainstream evidence-based medicine, and I was all in. It felt like the answer to so many problems in medicine. We should not practice based on habit, personality, or hierarchy. We should practice based on data. It felt not only intellectually satisfying, but morally right.

What I did not understand then was how much market forces would shape what counted …

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Is evidence-based medicine quietly failing physicians?

The real reason physicians won’t delegate paperwork

Health Technology
July 18, 2026

Ask physicians why they don’t hand off more of the paperwork burying their day, and the answer comes fast. No time to train anyone. Not enough staff. The EHR fights it. All fair. Those are the reasons that surface when a practice sits down and asks why everyone’s stretched so thin.

There’s another reason on that list, though. Lower down. The one nobody says with the door open.

When the AMA Read more…

The real reason physicians won’t delegate paperwork

How motherhood made me a better pediatric surgeon

Physician
July 18, 2026

“Are you like Doc McStuffins?”

I look down into a pair of bright, inquisitive blue eyes framed by thick black lashes. My first pediatric patient is sitting on her stretcher in a Care Bear-covered gown, her arms crossed. She is clearly auditing my credentials to see if I measure up to her animated hero.

“Kind of?” I offer. Her lips immediately purse into a skeptical pout. I sit on the edge of …

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How motherhood made me a better pediatric surgeon

Smile confidence is a real mental health concern

Conditions and Diseases
July 18, 2026

A patient once sat in my chair with her hand covering her mouth mid-conversation. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t shy. She was ashamed of her smile, and that shame had quietly shaped nearly every social interaction she’d had for years.

In over eighteen years of dental practice, I’ve seen this pattern more times than I can count. Patients come in for a clinical procedure, but what they’re really carrying through the …

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Smile confidence is a real mental health concern

Medicare will pay you to keep patients well. Most practices miss it. [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 17, 2026
YouTube video

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

Medicare will pay your practice to keep chronically ill patients out of the hospital, so why do most practices leave that money unused? Rachel Yates, a registered nurse and health care executive, joins …

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Medicare will pay you to keep patients well. Most practices miss it. [PODCAST]

Why physician advocacy matters more than ever

Health Policy
July 17, 2026

When I started medical school, I pledged to take care of anyone who would walk through the door. I pledged not to discriminate between my patients and to advocate for them both inside and outside the clinic. Like many first-year medical students, I entered medicine with a certain idealism. I believed medicine was fundamentally about serving those who needed care most, and I assumed everyone around me would agree with …

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Why physician advocacy matters more than ever

Oral health literacy is the barrier we rarely name

Conditions and Diseases
July 17, 2026

During my years in dentistry, I often noticed something that extended far beyond clinical care. Many people were not ignoring their oral health because they did not care. They were making decisions based on incomplete, confusing, or inaccurate information.

Some believed that bleeding gums were normal. Others assumed that dental visits were only necessary when pain appeared. Many did not realize that everyday habits, such as frequent consumption of sugary drinks …

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Oral health literacy is the barrier we rarely name

Discipline isn’t the missing piece. Agency is.

Physician
July 17, 2026

A patient once sat across from me in my exam room, glanced at the bookshelf behind me, and said, “Doc, I just don’t have your discipline.” He was looking at a copy of one of my first books, Dr. T’s Drop the Fat Diet, which features a before-and-after photo on the cover. The “after” image shows a six-pack I built through years of focused effort. To him, that cover …

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Discipline isn’t the missing piece. Agency is.

Leadership diversity is a governance problem, not a slogan

Physician
July 17, 2026

Hospitals would never rely on the idea that “we know good care when we see it” to control infections. Yet when choosing leaders, many still rely on the vague belief that “we know leadership potential when we see it.”

Medicine reviews nearly every process that affects patient care. But choosing leaders often happens privately, through conversations, informal nominations, search committees, and personal opinions about “fit.” This process is rarely reviewed as …

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Leadership diversity is a governance problem, not a slogan

Clinical authorship: the missing principle in medical AI

Health Technology
July 17, 2026

Artificial intelligence has not entered the clinical encounter at one point. It has entered at three discrete points, and they’re rarely discussed as one problem.

Before the visit, patients are using AI to organize symptoms, interpret test results, and decide whether a concern is worth seeing someone about. During the visit, clinicians are using AI to search evidence, broaden a differential, and check guidelines. After the visit, ambient tools are turning …

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Clinical authorship: the missing principle in medical AI

Physician burnout is the hazard no one trained me for

Physician
July 17, 2026

If you hadn’t smoked your whole goddam life, I would be asleep right now. This thought floated through my brain as I stood waiting for the elevator to take me to where an old man with emphysema was gasping for breath. It was 4 a.m. I was a second-year resident on call. I had been working almost 24 hours with barely time to pee, let alone sleep. And here I …

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Physician burnout is the hazard no one trained me for

Testosterone replacement therapy isn’t a military fix

Medications
July 17, 2026

Testosterone is having a moment. From patients requesting testosterone testing, to morning sports radio urging me to “get my T checked,” to Pete Hegseth’s recent recommendation to screen military personnel, testosterone just won’t go away. The renewed interest in testosterone is as much cultural as it is medical. Culturally, prominent male podcasters and proponents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement equate muscles and testosterone with masculinity. So, after …

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Testosterone replacement therapy isn’t a military fix

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The ceramic tree that got me through residency

Conditions and Diseases
July 17, 2026

Being a doctor is hard.
Becoming a doctor is hard.
The hours are tough.
The days are tiring,
and the nights are tiring.
Missed holidays with family are difficult.
The exhaustion is palpable.
The insecurity in your ability is real.
The sadness about sick patients is human.
It seems obvious that it might become overwhelming.
What happens when you are faced with this?
Reach out.
Reach out to anyone and everyone.

Years ago, as an intern in pediatrics, the hours, fatigue, and on-call …

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The ceramic tree that got me through residency

The business of medicine was never on my syllabus

Physician Finance
July 17, 2026

It was two in the morning and I was starting a heparin drip on a patient whose clot was not going to wait for daylight. I typed the order, the electronic health record (EHR) flagged the weight-based dose, and minutes later a nurse hung the bag and programmed the smart infusion pump at the bedside. The pump beeped, the number climbed, and I moved on to the next patient without …

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The business of medicine was never on my syllabus

When doctors don’t believe you, you’re on your own

Conditions and Diseases
July 17, 2026

An excerpt from Dizzy: A Memoir.

Two days later, in the nurse practitioner’s office, she said, “Here, take a look at the X-ray.” On the backlit screen, she hung up the butterfly image of my torso and I wanted to yank it down immediately. I had always been so strong, so independent, and here was proof that I was nothing but whispery, small bones, the rest of my body fading …

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When doctors don’t believe you, you’re on your own

Cardiac arrest is a human problem, not a training problem

Podcast
July 16, 2026
YouTube video

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

When a patient’s heart stops, the person leading the code is running on memory alone, and memory fails under that kind of pressure. Michael Peck is an anesthesiologist and retired faculty member at …

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Cardiac arrest is a human problem, not a training problem

It isn’t physician burnout. It’s erosion.

Conditions and Diseases
July 16, 2026

I understand why clinicians kill themselves.

That’s not a dramatic opening. It’s a fact I’ve carried for years, one that most people in medicine understand but rarely say out loud, because saying it feels like an indictment of something we gave everything to.

And yet here we are. Still losing people. Still calling it something it isn’t.

The word everyone reaches for is “burnout.” It’s on hospital posters, in wellness newsletters, in keynote …

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It isn’t physician burnout. It’s erosion.

Lead apron management is a logistics problem ignored

Conditions and Diseases
July 16, 2026

Every day, thousands of health care workers put on lead aprons before stepping into imaging suites, fluoroscopy rooms, and interventional radiology labs. These garments, unglamorous, heavy, and easy to overlook, are the last line of defense between clinical staff and the cumulative effects of ionizing radiation. According to the World Health Organization, repeated exposure to radiation can lead to skin and blood damage, cataracts, infertility, congenital disabilities, and cancer. …

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Lead apron management is a logistics problem ignored

From endocrinologist to writer: a doctor’s second act

Physician
July 16, 2026

For nearly three decades, I lived inside the machinery of medicine.

As a busy endocrinologist, my days revolved around blood sugars, thyroid glands, hormones, weight, lab results, prescription refills, insurance denials, prior authorizations, and the occasional body part someone believed had betrayed them. My schedule was full before I even sat down. There were charts to sign, labs to review, patients to see, and paperwork quietly reproducing in every corner.

Medicine is …

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From endocrinologist to writer: a doctor’s second act

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