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A pediatrician on the lead contamination crisis

Physician

October 25, 2025

I shake my head in disbelief. Is this really happening in the United States? As a pediatrician and public health advocate, I believe we are witnessing the literal systematic dismantling of our health care system.

Case in point: the federal government’s mishandling of two recent lead contamination crises (in Michigan and Wisconsin). These failures not only expose children to preventable toxic harm, but also reveal a deeper breakdown in democratic accountability …

Physician burnout as a relationship crisis

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

When people discuss physician burnout, they often reduce it to a workplace issue: long hours, endless charting, electronic health records that seem never to end, and patient loads that test the limits of human capacity. The solutions we’re offered sound deceptively simple: take a vacation, practice gratitude, do yoga, and meditate more. It’s as if wellness could be squeezed into the fifteen minutes we have left after charting at midnight. …

The making of a rested healer

Roxanne Almas, MD, MSPH

Physician

October 25, 2025

I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until everything stopped. First came burnout, the quiet unraveling so many physicians know too well. Then grief followed. I lost my mother unexpectedly to an aggressive cancer and, three years later, my father after years of caregiving through advanced Parkinson’s disease. These losses shattered not only my heart but the way I viewed my life and work. For years, I practiced medicine within …

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The making of a rested healer

The decline of the doctor-patient relationship

William Lynes, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

Something is wrong with our health care system. Our country spends more per capita than any other developed nation, yet we have some of the worst health care outcomes. Rising costs are making health care prohibitive. Access to the system is becoming a growing concern. Medical care has become bureaucratic, bulky, and inefficient. I am a retired physician, a urologist, who has observed the health care system from outside medical …

The secret illnesses of U.S. presidents

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

Presidents are not immortal. But for much of American history, their bodies have been treated as state secrets, curated, concealed, and choreographed for public reassurance. When illness is hidden, the cost is not just clinical. It is geopolitical.

Warren G. Harding: collapse before the scandal

President Warren G. Harding died suddenly on August 2, 1923, at age 57, while touring the country on his “Voyage of Understanding.” He collapsed in San Francisco’s …

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The secret illnesses of U.S. presidents

A psychiatrist’s scarlet letter of shame

Courtney Markham-Abedi, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

I put it on one night among tears and grief. It slid onto my skin like butter, like it was meant for me. It hugged my torso and clung to all the wrong places. The truth is, I had worn it before. I am unsure exactly when I last stopped wearing it. Unlike the donning of the letter, the removal is much quieter. I probably did not realize exactly when …

How sleep, nutrition, and exercise restore physician well-being [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

October 24, 2025

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

Physical therapists Kim Downey, Ziya Altug, and Shirish Sachdeva discuss their article “How physicians can reclaim resilience through better sleep, nutrition, and exercise.” In this episode, Kim, Ziya, and Shirish explain how …

The physician mental health crisis in the ER

Ronke Lawal

Policy

October 24, 2025

The numbers are staggering. Americans made 139.8 million emergency department visits in 2024, that is 42.7 visits per 100 people, with behavioral health issues driving an unprecedented surge. Behind these statistics lies a harsh reality: depression, a leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, is overwhelming our emergency departments with cases they were never designed to handle. This tsunami of mental health crises creates a vicious cycle. …

Is mental illness the root of mass shootings?

Sabooh S. Mubbashar, MD

Physician

October 24, 2025

(Author’s note: This article has been a year in the making. Each time another mass shooting makes headlines, I think, this is the moment to speak, and then life intervenes. The opportunity to contribute meaningfully feels missed. But the cruelest irony is this: Wait ten more days, and there will be another tragedy to make the conversation relevant again. That, in itself, is the most heartbreaking fact of all.)

“Study my …

How new physicians can build their career

David B. Mandell, JD, MBA

Finance

October 24, 2025

Introduction

In a recent episode of the Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, host David Mandell, JD, MBA, welcomed Dr. Michael Ast, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in adult reconstruction and joint replacement surgery. Beyond being an accomplished clinician at the Hospital of Special Surgery in New York, Dr. Ast also lectures often on business and career issues, and is especially passionate about teaching younger physicians how to build their practices …

Moral distress vs. burnout in medicine

Sami Sinada, MD

Physician

October 24, 2025

“To practice medicine,” a mentor once told me, “is to live with the tension between what you can do and what you should do.”

I didn’t understand him then. I do now. It is two in the morning in a Chicago hospital. The unit hums with fluorescent fatigue. A man in his fifties lies gasping for air, his lungs crowded by metastatic cancer. His chart lists “full code.” His daughter, sobbing …

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Moral distress vs. burnout in medicine

Why doctors make bad financial decisions

Wesley J. McBride, MD, CFP

Finance

October 24, 2025

Doctors, I like to think, are fairly intelligent people. We worked hard in school, extremely hard in residency, and continue to refine our skills decades into practice. In addition to being intellectual, we are often experts in our fields. We enjoy more respect and higher salaries than most professions. Our work can be humbling and challenging, and it exposes us to the flawed nature of humans. Despite deeply understanding that …

Is your medical career a golden cage?

Tracy Gapin, MD

Physician

October 24, 2025

What if the career you spent your life building, the one filled with achievement, purpose, and prestige, is now the cage you cannot escape? That question did not just haunt me; it held me back for years.

I was a successful urologist, specialized in advanced prostate cancer detection, robotic surgery, and men’s health. From the outside, I had it all: a thriving practice, financial security, a respected reputation, and a steady …

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Is your medical career a golden cage?

Medicine fails its working mothers

Julie Zaituna, DO, MPH

Physician

October 24, 2025

As I sit breastfeeding a newborn and hastily switch to pump while the newborn (my fourth child) dozes, I have some thoughts that I think are particularly timely given concerns that are facing millions of families of young children in our country. Maternal and infant mortality continue to be worryingly high in the U.S., especially for women and children of color and in socially vulnerable areas of our country. The …

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Medicine fails its working mothers

Diagnosing the epidemic of U.S. violence

Brian Lynch, MD

Physician

October 24, 2025

As a physician, I am trained to diagnose not just the presenting symptom but the underlying pathology. This is the same lens through which many of us in the medical community view the epidemic of American violence. For years, organizations from the AMA to the CDC have called it a public health crisis. This is not merely a metaphor; it is a clinical framework pioneered right here in Chicago by …

A neurosurgeon’s fight with the state medical board [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

October 23, 2025

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

Neurosurgeon Jeffrey Hatef, Jr. discusses his article “Guilty until proven innocent? My experience with a state medical board.” In this episode, Jeffrey shares the shocking story of how his medical license was …

Traveling with end-stage renal disease

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

October 23, 2025

My wife, Kathy, had stage 4 end-stage renal disease. She was slowly dying, but never stopped living. Her resilience in managing peritoneal dialysis made travel possible, even with the logistical complexities involved. Ireland had long been on our bucket list, inspired by Kathy and Stephanie’s earlier visit while we lived in Peoria. With careful planning, we booked our flights using points out of Orlando, knowing the drive would minimize Kathy’s …

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Traveling with end-stage renal disease

The high cost of PCSK9 inhibitors like Repatha

Larry Kaskel, MD

Conditions

October 23, 2025

When the FOURIER trial was published in 2017, cardiologists and lipidologists everywhere hailed it as proof that lowering LDL with PCSK9 inhibitors “saves lives.” But when you actually read the data, not the press releases, it’s hard not to shake your head.

Over a median of 2.2 years, evolocumab (Repatha) reduced nonfatal heart attacks by about 0.9 percent and had no significant impact on death. The absolute risk reduction for all-cause …

Why non-work stress fuels burnout

Perrette St. Preux, RN, MScPH

Conditions

October 23, 2025

While work-related stress continues to be a major cause of burnout, new research shows that non-work stressors like caregiving demands, financial instability, and personal life conflicts also greatly increase the risk. Yet, the dominant narrative has not caught up, and many still believe burnout is only a workplace problem, overlooking the deeper, life-wide imbalance it often reflects.

Recently, I spoke to a nurse on sick leave for the third time …

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Why non-work stress fuels burnout

Why wellness programs fail health care

Jodie Green & Kim Downey, PT

Conditions

October 23, 2025

Jodie Green and I have been following each other on social media for a couple of years, and we finally had a conversation a few months ago. We discussed our appreciation for the work each of us is doing to support doctors and all other health care professionals, including my efforts and Jodie’s with her organization, the Clinician Burnout Foundation. We’re amplifying meaningful resources that are available for …

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Why wellness programs fail health care

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