The U.S. gastroenterologist shortage explained

Physician
December 7, 2025

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 …

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Finding your why after career burnout

Physician
December 7, 2025

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

When I lost meaning in and for my life while questioning my career path as a surgical resident, I lost motivation to eat and isolated in guilt and shame. Looking back, I had given up the very things that I now realize give life meaning in the pursuit of my career: relationships (including friendship and community …

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Cancer care’s financial toxicity [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 6, 2025
YouTube video

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Oncologist and health care executive Yousuf Zafar discusses his article, “When cancer costs too much: Why financial toxicity deserves a place in clinical conversations.” Yousuf explains the concept of “financial toxicity,” a …

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How pro hockey prepared me for residency challenges

Physician
December 6, 2025

My journey to medicine was a little bit different than most. Prior to beginning my academic career, I had the fortune of being a second-round NHL draft pick and enjoyed a career as a professional hockey player.

When I went through my CaRMS interviews, I was often asked about my previous experience and how that would help me in residency. I would give the typical answer: “Teamwork makes the dream work,” …

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A pediatrician’s medical service in war and peace

Physician
December 6, 2025

I was the expectant team leader at Minot, the one designated to survive “a little longer than the others” if nuclear war came. My role was not glamorous. It was a reminder that even in medicine, some of us were expendable. Years later, I was nearly sent to the First Gulf War, and I watched colleagues deployed to Afghanistan, developmental pediatricians pressed into service far from the children they were …

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How an AI medical scribe saved my practice

Tech
December 6, 2025

When I wrote my first novel last year, I grappled with the ethical implications of using a large language model to guide my writing process (one I have been carefully refining for decades). Prompt after prompt, my mind became inundated with the notions of how every query consumed a not insignificant amount of energy and the black box of the generated text’s origins. “Am I relying too heavily on this …

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Physician boundaries: When compassion causes harm

Conditions
December 6, 2025

I used to believe that being a good physician meant being generous, flexible, and willing to bend the rules if it helped a patient. I don’t believe that anymore.

The lesson came from a young patient who walked into my traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic one afternoon, looking exhausted, embarrassed, and desperate.

He needed a powdered herbal preparation that cost around NT$7,500 (about $230). He stared at the ground and whispered, “Doctor, …

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Rural health care access: Japan vs. U.S.

Physician
December 6, 2025

In Japan’s far north, Hokkaido stretches across mountains, forests, and endless snow. For months each year, the landscape turns white, and travel slows to a crawl. This vast and beautiful region (known for dairy farms, fishing towns, and open space) is also one of the most sparsely populated parts of the country.

For people living here, health care access depends not only on medicine, but on geography, infrastructure, and weather. It’s …

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A lawyer’s essential checklist for physician side hustles [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 5, 2025
YouTube video

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

Licensed attorney Anu Murthy discusses her article, “A lawyer’s guide to physician side gigs.” Anu details why the pandemic caused an explosion in physician side gigs (from telehealth to passion projects) and …

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When TV shows use food allergy as murder

Conditions
December 5, 2025

As the holiday season approaches, many people look forward to gatherings, travel, and celebrations centered around food. For those living with food allergies, however, this time of year brings a different reality. It means navigating crowded parties where allergens are everywhere, traveling on airlines that may or may not honor allergy precautions, and repeatedly encountering people who still do not fully believe that food allergy is real or life-threatening. The …

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The devaluation of physicians in health care

Physician
December 5, 2025

It is remarkable that treatises, white papers, editorials, and articles on the cost of health care are consistent with ignoring the essence of care, and they are lacking in physician commentary. Insurance is not health care, and there can be no health care without doctors. Simply stated, in the end after all the intermediaries have claimed their pound of flesh for myriad services that most often provide little to no …

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Institutional inbreeding in developmental-behavioral pediatrics

Conditions
December 5, 2025

Developmental-behavioral pediatrics (DBP) was once defined by giants, leaders who authored textbooks, set standards, and gave the specialty a clear identity. Today, the field is fragmented, misunderstood, and too often hostile to new ideas. My own career arc illustrates how inbreeding and isolation have hollowed out DBP, leaving children without advocates and institutions without direction.

At a major military medical center, retired military DBPs replaced me. All were trained at that …

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Medicare payment is failing rural health

Policy
December 5, 2025

Ten years ago, I quit my job and started a solo office-based practice in rural Washington. I serve patients like Mr. G, an elderly gentleman who drove over 70 miles through mountain passes and rural highways to receive care for gangrene of his foot, as nearby hospitals were either too full or too far away. But Medicare’s broken payment system is endangering practices like mine, quietly dismantling access to affordable …

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A doctor’s ritual: Reading obituaries

Physician
December 5, 2025

I live across the street from a funeral home. Each day as I see the cars begin to line up and the people in dark clothes gather to say goodbye, I can’t help but wonder about the stories inside. Who were they coming to honor? What kind of life had just ended? So, most mornings, before I check my email or the hospital census, I read the obituaries.

As a child, …

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The physician-nurse hierarchy in medicine

Education
December 5, 2025

When an attending doctor recently took me aside after a particularly hard clinical case with a first-year resident, she made pains to point out to me that the resident felt she wasn’t being treated fairly by nurses, because she was a woman. The physician went on to describe the difficulty of being a woman in a professional world where male colleagues are taken more seriously and treated with more respect, …

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How new pancreatic cancer laser therapy works

Conditions
December 5, 2025

Researchers at Sichuan University in China have developed a laser therapy that selectively kills pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumors while preserving the surrounding healthy tissue. The technology, built around a 6.1-micron laser, takes advantage of the characteristic collagen fingerprint within PDAC tumors to focus the laser energy where it is needed the most.

The technology has received full approval from the Chinese National Medical Products Administration and will be developed …

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How to prevent child sexual abuse [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 4, 2025
YouTube video

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

Pediatric emergency medicine physician Bronwen Carroll discusses her article, “The childhood risk we never talk about.” Bronwen explains the staggering data showing child sexual abuse is far more common than many other …

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Community hospital innovation: a survival story

Conditions
December 4, 2025

Innovation in health care is often described in technological terms (new devices, advanced imaging, digital platforms). But some of the most meaningful forms of innovation happen quietly, inside small hospitals struggling to survive.

This is the story of a community hospital in Taiwan that once faced collapse, and the unexpected lessons it offers to health care leaders everywhere.

Looking for a way forward

In the late 1990s, the hospital was in serious decline. …

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California’s opioid policy hypocrisy

Conditions
December 4, 2025

California’s opioid policies reveal a stark hypocrisy, imposing draconian restrictions on prescriptions for chronic pain patients (leaving wildfire survivors and others in unrelenting agony) while allocating over $100 million annually through initiatives like the California Harm Reduction Initiative (CHRI) and Proposition 36 to provide free needles, pipes, and fentanyl test strips to addicts with minimal oversight. This disparity is compounded by the Medical Board of California’s (MBC) overreach, where physicians …

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The physician’s change cycle: Why doctors stay stuck

Physician
December 4, 2025

In medicine, we are trained to act decisively in moments of crisis. We respond to hemorrhage, cardiac arrest, and trauma with clarity and speed. Yet when the crisis is internal (when the dysfunction lies within our teams, our leadership structures, or ourselves) many of us hesitate. We tolerate misalignment because it is familiar. We fear change more than we fear staying stuck.

This fear is not benign. It erodes morale, fractures …

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