KevinMD.com

August 27, 2026Aug 27, 2026

Few drugs boast the rap sheet of Seroquel (quetiapine). After the pharmaceutical industry marketed atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel as amazingly superior to older antipsychotics like Thorazine and Haldol (pay no attention to their same tardive dyskinesia side effects), Seroquel became its manufacturer’s second-best-selling drug globally, behind only Nexium and netting $5.3 billion in 2011. Many have forgotten Seroquel’s contested past, including how an early proponent went to prison in …

Conditions and diseases

Combat grief is the wound veterans never mourn

Scott Janssen, MSW, LCSW

August 27, 2026Aug 27, 2026

Jack, a seventy-six-year-old hospice patient and veteran of the Vietnam War, had time on his hands. Stuck in a hospital bed, looking back on his life, he was increasingly focused on his time as a young infantryman caught up in…

Looking back and taking stock in one’s life is common as patients approach the end of their lives. In 1963, Robert Butler, MD, called this process …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Why telemedicine should be a career, not a side gig [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

When his shifts were cut during the pandemic, he took a telemedicine job to pay the bills and ended up loving it. Suneer Chander is an emergency physician who co-wrote the article "Telemedicine as a career, not a side gig,"…

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When his shifts were cut during the pandemic, he took a telemedicine job to pay the bills and ended up loving it. Suneer Chander is an emergency physician who co-wrote the article “Telemedicine as a career, not a side gig,” published on KevinMD. He makes the case that telemedicine is …

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Health technology

AI gave patients answers. They still need judgment.

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

The modern physician is no longer competing with disease alone. The new adversary is expectation: limitless, instantaneous, and increasingly shaped by algorithms. In the span of a decade, the patient has evolved. First came "Dr. Google, MD" offering a chaotic…

The modern physician is no longer competing with disease alone. The new adversary is expectation: limitless, instantaneous, and increasingly shaped by algorithms.

In the span of a decade, the patient has evolved. First came “Dr. Google, MD” offering a chaotic but empowering flood of information. Then “Dr. PubMed, MD, PhD” sharpening the curious into quasi-specialists fluent in abstracts and endpoints. Now we face the almighty “Prof. AI”: tireless, confident, and available …

Physician voices

Physician addiction is a disease of silence and shame

Michael F. Myers, MD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

An excerpt from Physicians With Lived Experience: How Their Stories Offer Clinical Guidance (APA Publishing, 2025). In an interview that Dr. Grinspoon did with the New York Post in 2016, "I was a doctor – and a drug pusher," he…

An excerpt from Physicians With Lived Experience: How Their Stories Offer Clinical Guidance (APA Publishing, 2025).

In an interview that Dr. Grinspoon did with the New York Post in 2016, “I was a doctor – and a drug pusher,” he describes making a home visit as a medical student to tend to a stage 4 cancer patient. While there, he steals a dozen of the patient’s …

Conditions and diseases

Why nurses are leaving the profession they love

Natalia Eden, RN

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

I recently revisited the story of Ramona Pierson, a woman who survived a devastating accident, spent 18 months in a coma, and eventually rebuilt her life with the help of an unexpected community of older adults. It is an inspiring…

It is an inspiring story. It is also one that raises an important question for those of us who have worked in long-term care: What kind of facility was this?

In retellings of Pierson’s story, the …

Physician finance

How to run private fund due diligence like a reviewer

Harsha Moole, MD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

I have reviewed manuscripts for more than thirty journals. The habit is always the same. Skip the abstract. Go straight to the methods, because that is where the paper either holds up or falls apart. Then a fund pitch lands…

I have reviewed manuscripts for more than thirty journals. The habit is always the same. Skip the abstract. Go straight to the methods, because that is where the paper either holds up or falls apart.

Then a fund pitch lands in your inbox and the habit disappears. The deck opens with a big number, and most of us read that number the way we would never read an abstract.

First, the words, …

Physician voices

5 ways to beat mid-career physician burnout

Neil Baum, MD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

We all have times when we wonder, "Did I choose the right profession? Should I recommend a medical career for my children? Is it time to retire?" These questions creep into the minds of mid-career physicians. We often ask ourselves…

We all have times when we wonder, “Did I choose the right profession? Should I recommend a medical career for my children? Is it time to retire?” These questions creep into the minds of mid-career physicians. We often ask ourselves how we should address the mid-career blahs. What can we do to improve our professional satisfaction? How can we combat the dullness and tedium of our workday lives? And how …

Drugs and prescribing

Is your patient’s new symptom a prescribing cascade?

Narinder Singh Parhar, MD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

Modern scientific medicine has given humanity extraordinary tools. Antibiotics transformed once-lethal infections into treatable illnesses. Cardiovascular medications prevent strokes and myocardial infarctions. Insulin, anticoagulants, immunotherapies, psychiatric medications, and countless other treatments have extended and improved millions of lives. The problem…

The problem is not medication. The problem begins when our capacity to prescribe becomes greater than our discipline to ask whether every intervention remains necessary. That distinction is increasingly important in an aging …

Conditions and diseases

Why smart physicians make bad money moves

J. Tyler Rosier, PsyD

August 26, 2026Aug 26, 2026

It is late evening on a Tuesday. Not a remarkably unusual Tuesday, but the typical day that we have all experienced after a hard day at work. She sits alone at the kitchen island after working a 12-hour day in the OR. She is doing something that she has done countless times: moving money back into cash during a time of market volatility.

She knows this is the wrong action to …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Doctors and patients are not the enemy here [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

He was sued for a case he barely remembered, and five years later it pushed him out of medicine. It is not just malpractice. Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician and the author of The Healthcare Heist: How Physicians…

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Conditions and diseases

Being dismissed by a doctor because I stock retail

Jennifer Constance Hart

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

My story begins the weekend before the Fourth of July. We were celebrating at our friend, the window guy's, house on June 27th. Tom decided to have the party a weekend early because this year marks the 250th anniversary of…

My story begins the weekend before the Fourth of July. We were celebrating at our friend, the window guy’s, house on June 27th. Tom decided to have the party a weekend early because this year marks the 250th anniversary of our country, and he knew the holiday weekend would be packed with other celebrations.

That Saturday, I had a stinging sensation in my neck and my arm was sore. I was …

Conditions and diseases

Why cannabis and anesthesia are a high-risk combination

Jannea Vance & Zulfiqar Ahmed, MD

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

Abstract Cannabis use is rapidly increasing across the United States following widespread legalization. This trend poses new challenges in perioperative management due to complex pharmacologic and physiologic effects. This review summarizes current knowledge on cannabis interactions with anesthetic agents and…

Abstract

Cannabis use is rapidly increasing across the United States following widespread legalization. This trend poses new challenges in perioperative management due to complex pharmacologic and physiologic effects. This review summarizes current knowledge on cannabis interactions with anesthetic agents and highlights associated cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal risks. Professional recommendations and best practices are discussed to assist perioperative teams in safely managing patients with recent or chronic cannabis exposure.

Introduction

Cannabis use is increasing …

Physician voices

What one emergency room shift really costs a doctor

Christine DeSanno, DO

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

My shift started at 7 a.m. The overnight physician wishes me a good shift. We both know that's mostly luck. I pick up my first patient before I've taken a sip of coffee. My first few patients are what we…

My shift started at 7 a.m. The overnight physician wishes me a good shift. We both know that’s mostly luck. I pick up my first patient before I’ve taken a sip of coffee.

My first few patients are what we affectionately call “bread and butter.” An ankle injury. A cough that’s lingered for two days. Back pain. A medication refill. Someone wants an MRI today because they’ve had headaches for three …

Health technology

How to ask patients about AI chatbots and psychosis

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

In November 2023, before ChatGPT-driven psychosis cases had made a single headline, a Danish psychiatrist named Søren Dinesen Østergaard published a short, almost speculative paper in Schizophrenia Bulletin. His question: Would generative AI chatbots generate delusions in individuals prone to psychosis? At the time, it read like an interesting hypothesis from someone paying close attention to a technology most of psychiatry hadn’t thought much about yet.

This February, Østergaard and …

Conditions and diseases

Understanding a dementia diagnosis when you feel lost

Tim Hayden

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

My mother was diagnosed with dementia when she was 66. What followed was a five-year decline that ended when she died at 71. Years later, my father received the same diagnosis. I am telling you this not because it is…

My mother was diagnosed with dementia when she was 66. What followed was a five-year decline that ended when she died at 71. Years later, my father received the same diagnosis.

I am telling you this not because it is unusual. It is not. It is because for most of a decade, my family lived inside the exact gap I eventually built a company to fix: the space between getting a …

Conditions and diseases

Protect physicians from bureaucracy, not from patients

Matt Hasan, PhD

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

Lately, there has been considerable discussion about the changing boundaries between physicians and patients. How quickly should doctors respond to portal messages? When does reasonable access become unreasonable intrusion? Where does professional responsibility end and personal time begin? These are…

These are legitimate questions. Physicians are entitled to privacy, reasonable working hours, and protection from inappropriate demands. No one should expect a physician to be available to every patient at every hour through …

Physician voices

The certification process that has no off-ramp

Victor S. Sloan, MD

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

For those of you navigating the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification, I thought this anecdote might shed some additional light on the problems with the process. On June 26, I had a two-level spinal fusion. On…

For those of you navigating the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification, I thought this anecdote might shed some additional light on the problems with the process.

On June 26, I had a two-level spinal fusion. On May 9, I called the board to see if it was possible to “stop the clock” on the questions, since I anticipated, correctly in retrospect, that I would not be in …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Leaving her practice to reinvent herself from scratch [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

August 24, 2026Aug 24, 2026

She built a thriving practice in Manhattan and appeared all over the media. Then she walked away, and it was never burnout. Samantha Nazareth is a gastroenterologist and the author of the memoir I Left Anyway: The Life I Was…

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Medical education

Why nearly every pre-med now takes a gap year

Claudia Rodriguez

August 24, 2026Aug 24, 2026

An increasing number of pre-med students in the U.S. are electing to take a gap year, but is this the best option for them? More importantly, is it best for the medical field as a whole? Many students believe taking…

An increasing number of pre-med students in the U.S. are electing to take a gap year, but is this the best option for them? More importantly, is it best for the medical field as a whole?

Many students believe taking a gap year improves their admission chances. While compounding variables prevent conclusive proof that a gap year directly helps, the extra time is understandably attractive, as it allows students to …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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