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The danger of calling medicine a “calling”

Physician

October 19, 2025

The idea that medicine is a “calling” has been entwined deeply within our profession. From white coat ceremonies to recruitment posters featuring smiling doctors holding stethoscopes, we are told that to enter medicine is to answer a higher purpose. This framing is powerful. It inspires loyalty, fuels commitment, and builds identity. That is how the brainwashing begins as it also hides a dangerous truth: Labeling medicine as a calling has …

How retraining the physician mindset can boost resilience and joy in medicine [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

October 18, 2025

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

Licensed counselor and coach Mary Remón discusses her article “A mindset shift for physicians: Retrain your brain to see what’s going well.” Mary explains how physicians are trained to scan constantly for …

How AI on social media fuels body dysmorphia

STRIPED, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Policy

October 18, 2025

The alarming relationship between artificial intelligence and adolescent body dysmorphia

That is what the American Health Law Association called the global increase in social media usage: an epidemic.

Indeed, social media usage and reliance, especially by youth, is becoming a mental health phenomenon quickly escalating out of control.

Nearly 25 percent of youth report spending over four hours on social media daily, with 46 percent of adolescents claiming that social media …

Physician work-life balance and family

Francisco M. Torres, MD

Physician

October 18, 2025

As a parent and a doctor of nearly four decades, I’ve often found myself navigating the rugged terrain of a dual existence: the life of a devoted physician, and the life of a dedicated parent. I have not always succeeded in both arenas. My wife and I both bear the weight of our professions, drawn into the noble yet demanding world of medicine. Our missions and ambitions, while fulfilling, have …

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Physician work-life balance and family

Why hesitation over the HPV vaccine threatens public health and equity

Ayesha Khan

Conditions

October 18, 2025

In the quiet that follows a routine pediatric check-up, a single word, “vaccines,” can suddenly change the air. Where vaccines were once a simple part of childhood, they have become something parents scrutinize, debate, and sometimes outright resist. The shift is palpable, and it is increasingly showing up in clinic rooms every day.

As a medical student training in New York City, I am constantly struck by a paradox: We live …

What psychiatry teaches us about professionalism, loss, and becoming human

Hannah Wulk

Education

October 18, 2025

There is an old parable about a farmer whose horse runs away.

The neighbors cry, “Such bad luck!”

The farmer only replies, “Maybe so, maybe not. We will see.”

The next day, the horse returns with two wild horses. “Such good fortune!” they cheer.

Again, the farmer answers, “Maybe so, maybe not. We will see.”

Soon after, the farmer’s son breaks his leg taming one of the horses. “Such misfortune!”

The farmer answers, “Maybe so, maybe …

How Gen Z is reshaping health care through DIY approaches and digital tools [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

October 17, 2025

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

Amanda Heidemann, family physician and senior clinical content consultant for clinical effectiveness at Wolters Kluwer Health, discusses her article, “Gen Z’s DIY approach to health care.” Amanda explains how digital natives are …

Love and loss in the oncology ward

Dr. Damane Zehra

Physician

October 17, 2025

In the quiet moments of illness, I witness love and loss unfold.

I usually place the beds of relatively sick patients closest to my workstation. While I can monitor all the patients, except for a few female beds behind curtains, this arrangement helps me keep a closer eye on those who are more ill, particularly those receiving chemotherapy.

Directly in front of my counter lies a 50-year-old gentleman recently diagnosed with primary …

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Love and loss in the oncology ward

The weight of genetic testing in a family

Rebecca Thompson, MD

Physician

October 17, 2025

An excerpt from Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love.

Scott and I held hands as the last few minutes of waiting expanded to rival the anticipation of the days that had already passed. Two weeks ago at this same medical center, our perinatologist had performed a chorionic villus sampling, the procedure to collect the fragment of placenta that would determine our course. I had been …

A surgeon’s view on RVUs and moral injury

Rene Loyola, MD

Physician

October 17, 2025

For over forty years, I worked as a general and vascular surgeon. For the last ten of those years, I was employed under an RVU-based compensation model. That period is when my dissatisfaction with medicine truly began. Complex, life-saving operations were reduced to “productivity units.” The pressure was relentless, the system unforgiving.

And unlike primary care physicians, surgeons do not have the option of concierge or direct-pay models. We are necessarily …

Meeting transgender patients with compassion and equity in health care [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

October 16, 2025

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

Infectious disease physician Tyler B. Evans discusses his article “Meeting transgender patients where they are: a health care imperative.” Tyler, an infectious disease specialist and author of Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding …

Why your health is a portfolio to manage

Larry Kaskel, MD

Conditions

October 16, 2025

I’m not a financial advisor. But after 35 years in internal medicine and lipidology, I’ve realized that physicians are essentially wellth managers, stewards of human energy, rhythm, and resilience.

We help people diversify their time, protect their emotional capital, and build habits that generate compound interest in the form of years, vitality, and peace. In a way, our patients are portfolios: living, breathing balance sheets of choices and consequences.

It’s not money …

Reclaiming moral ambition in health care

Mick Connors, MD

Physician

October 16, 2025

When I started practicing medicine more than thirty years ago, I believed the system was imperfect but noble. We worked hard, we cared deeply, and I thought that if we just kept doing our best, things would gradually improve. I trusted that technology, new policies, and better organization would eventually bring us closer to the ideals of medicine. Some of those changes helped. Many did not.

If I am honest, there …

Pain control failures in fertility clinics

Maire Daugharty, MD

Conditions

October 16, 2025

“The Retrievals” is a podcast series hosted and written by Susan Burton and presented in cooperation with the New York Times that focuses on the failure of a Yale fertility clinic to address uncontrolled pain during procedures. As it turns out this was the result of a nurse surreptitiously replacing the pain medication fentanyl with saline to support her addiction. This apparently unfolded over the course of a year or …

Why what you do in midlife matters most

Michael Pessman

Conditions

October 16, 2025

Aging well is not solely a matter of luck or genes, in my experience as a gerontologist. The choices we make, the connections we nurture, and the support systems we build shape it. There is no better time than now to start—the latest research from 2024 and 2025 supports this.

Let us begin with a crucial insight: midlife is more important than we once imagined. In new studies, it has been …

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Why what you do in midlife matters most

When language barriers become a medical emergency

Monzur Morshed, MD and Kaysan Morshed

Physician

October 16, 2025

She clutched her chest, gasping for words that would not come in English. The nurse leaned in, trying to decipher. Her son was not there to translate, and the phone interpreter line was not connected yet. I could see her distress worsening. Precious minutes slipped away before we finally realized she was describing classic heart attack symptoms. That patient survived, but the outcome could easily have been different. And in …

A sibling’s guide to surviving medical school

Chuka Onuh and Ogechukwu Onuh, MD

Education

October 16, 2025

When we began medical school, we had dreams and plans for what the next four years would look like. After all, we had the privilege of being siblings on the same medical training journey. The truth we have realized over these past years is that nothing truly prepares you for how medical school will change your time, priorities, and even your sense of self. Therefore, the decisions you make (or …

Was Viagra the best heart drug we never had?

Bharat Desai, MD

Conditions

October 15, 2025

Prologue: the lost opportunity

Everyone knows Viagra as the “little blue pill” that revolutionized the bedroom. But what if its greatest potential was never about sex, but about saving lives?

A long-term study from Manchester followed men with both diabetes and a prior heart attack, about as high-risk a group as you can imagine. The results were astonishing: those who used sildenafil (Viagra) had a thirty-eight percent lower risk of another …

How to stay safe from back-to-school illnesses

Kevin King, PhD

Conditions

October 15, 2025

From daycare to college, the back-to-school season almost always correlates to one thing: a rise in respiratory illnesses. In late summer, when children are returning to their classrooms, outbreaks of illnesses like strep throat, influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) become more common, and schools can quickly become amplifiers of community transmission. These infections can spread rapidly through contact with surfaces where the virus or bacteria is present, like …

The burden of the eldest daughter

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

October 15, 2025

Were you the one who always held it together? The responsible one? The one who made sure everyone else was OK, sometimes at the cost of your own well-being?

For most eldest daughters, this role is inevitable. We don’t choose it. We are handed it, early and often, because we are so “capable.” We accept this role and excel at it. That’s what most eldest daughters do with whatever is handed …

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The burden of the eldest daughter

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