From nurse practitioner to quality improvement leader in sleep medicine

Conditions
August 6, 2025

I am a doctor of nursing practice and board-certified nurse practitioner with over a decade of experience in internal medicine, pulmonology, and sleep medicine. My career has taken shape in the diverse and fast-paced outpatient care settings of New York, where I’ve had the opportunity to serve patients from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of the individuals I care for face chronic respiratory illnesses, comorbid conditions, and significant …

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Why accommodations aren’t special treatment but essential for equity

Physician
August 6, 2025

“Think of it this way,” the school’s pediatrician said to me, his voice flat in my headphones. “Back in college, would you want a lab partner who needed these accommodations? When I read a letter like this, I picture a student who may not even graduate high school. I have to prepare the family for that reality.”

I took a slow breath, calming myself. This wasn’t how I had hoped the …

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Stop telling burned-out doctors to be more resilient

Conditions
August 6, 2025

Doctors are often praised for their resilience. It’s become a buzzword in medicine, touted as some catch-all antidote to physician burnout. It’s used in keynotes, wellness programs, recruitment ads, hospital HR emails—everywhere really. “Feeling burned out? Improve your resilience.” But I believe that this emphasis on resilience often misses the mark. Worse, it can subtly reinforce the idea that if you’re suffering, you’re not resilient enough.

But what if the problem …

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AI can help heal the fragmented U.S. health care system

Tech
August 6, 2025

The U.S. health care system is a paradox. It’s the most expensive in the world—costing over $4.5 trillion annually—yet produces some of the worst health outcomes among developed nations. Fragmentation is at the core of this crisis. Patients bounce between primary care doctors, specialists, emergency rooms, and insurers, often with no single point of coordination. The result? Redundant tests, misdiagnoses, delayed care, and frustrated clinicians.

Enter artificial intelligence—not as a silver …

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A mindset shift for physicians: Retrain your brain to see what’s going well

Conditions
August 6, 2025

As a physician, you’re trained to spot problems. You scan for risks, anticipate complications, and stay alert for what could go wrong. That mindset helps keep patients safe. However, over time, it can become automatic, even outside of work.

When your attention is always tuned to what’s missing or what might fail, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s going well. One physician I coached was deeply committed to his patients …

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A surgeon’s take on God, intelligence, and cosmic responsibility

Physician
August 6, 2025

In the operating room, I often find myself marveling—not just at the complexity of the human body, but at its intelligence. The way tissues adapt, how cells communicate, how the body heals—it all feels less like machinery and more like music. There’s rhythm. Responsiveness. A kind of attunement.

That word—attunement—has become central to how I think about not only medicine, but life, belief, and even the nature of the universe itself.

As …

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Why we need a transparent standard for presidential cognitive health [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 5, 2025
YouTube video

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Nationally recognized psychiatrist, internist, and addiction medicine specialist Muhamad Aly Rifai discusses his article, “How President Biden’s cognitive health shapes political and legal trust.” While carefully observing the ethical constraints of the …

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How one man’s dying wish was denied by the health care system

Physician
August 5, 2025

“This is Dr. Mohr.” I answered a number I didn’t recognize.

“It’s Irving,” said the frantic voice. “He collapsed. The paramedics are working on him now.”

“They’re doing compressions? Stop! Put the paramedic on the phone!”

My father-in-law, Irving, the stoic Danish-American Navy veteran, had been on hospice for 3 months. His POST (physician order for life sustaining treatment) form was on file with the hospice agency and his custodial care facility: DNR/DNI, …

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Don’t ignore hematuria: When to worry about blood in your urine

Conditions
August 5, 2025

It happens more often than people talk about: You go to the bathroom, and suddenly you notice red or brownish urine in the toilet bowl. Your heart skips a beat. Is it something you ate? Could it be serious? Should you wait or call your doctor?

If you ever see blood in your urine, don’t panic, but don’t ignore it either. That red color, whether it’s faint pink or dark like …

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How showing up teaches children about grief and empathy

Physician
August 5, 2025

My children’s Montessori teacher lost her son to suicide several years ago. When I heard of her son’s death, memories came flooding back. I recalled Tom’s upper school project in which he presented a hoverboard. This inspired much reverence and awe in my son, who later attempted the same. Tom’s mother had tended to my daughter’s bumps and scrapes on the playground and helped her learn phonics. I gathered the …

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When conscience compels doctors to walk out

Physician
August 5, 2025

There is a kind of silence in hospitals that no overhead page can interrupt. The silence after you have raised a concern, documented it, escalated, and nothing changes. Some physicians endure that silence for years. Some burn out. A few walk out, not in defiance of medicine, but in fidelity to what medicine was supposed to be. And when they do, we often call them disruptive, political, or unprofessional. But …

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Physician hiring bias in one of America’s most progressive cities

Physician
August 5, 2025

I have been fortunate to practice in several areas of medicine in my career. This has led me to triple board certification in family medicine, palliative medicine, and addiction medicine. I speak Spanish fluently, have a spotless record, and have dedicated my career to caring for underserved patients.

Despite this, after years of applying to prestigious health systems in a major city, I’ve never once been contacted for an interview in …

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Fatty liver disease in young adults [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 4, 2025
YouTube video

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Gastroenterologist Anuj Vikrant Sharma discusses his article, “Fatty liver disease is no longer reserved for older adults.” He warns of a quiet epidemic of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a serious liver condition …

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Why GenAI pilots fail in health care—and how to fix it

Tech
August 4, 2025

Building health care AI pilots is easy; getting them to succeed at scale is a challenge.

According to a recent report from Bessemer Venture Partners, AWS, and Bain & Company, only 30 percent of GenAI health care pilots reach production, where an even smaller number will go on to be successful.

This is partly because many health care organizations are in “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” mode …

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Confessions of a lipidologist in recovery: the infection we’ve ignored for 40 years

Conditions
August 4, 2025

The end of my belief came on a fall night in 2011. I was driving to a suburban restaurant to give a paid dinner talk on Niaspan for Abbott Labs. It was a typical night for a physician speaker—slide deck polished, HDL-cholesterol optimism intact. Then the results of the AIM-HIGH trial came over public radio. Niacin, when added to a statin, had no cardiovascular benefit. My world cracked. I never …

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How hospitals use salary caps to suppress physician wages [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 3, 2025
YouTube video

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Health law attorney Dennis Hursh discusses his article, “Why hospitals are quietly capping top doctors’ pay.” For nearly 40 years, he has reviewed physician employment agreements and reveals a shocking recent trend: …

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How a heart transplant turned one woman into a national transplant advocate

Conditions
August 3, 2025

My name is Ava Kaufman, and my doctors didn’t think I would be alive today. I defied the odds after being listed for – and receiving – an experimental heart transplant.

Before my transplant, I was a healthy mother and businesswoman who loved to dance. I randomly noticed a rash appearing on my hands and shins, so I went to the dermatologist. They told me that I had psoriasis, but it …

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Innovation is moving too fast for health care workers to catch up

Policy
August 3, 2025

I recently spoke with close friends—both physicians—who admitted something quietly alarming: They’re not resisting change in health care. They’re just tired of constantly adapting while losing the essence of what brought them into medicine in the first place.

“I spend more time documenting than actually caring for my patients.”

“Every time I adjust to one system, a new one replaces it.”

These comments stayed with me—not as complaints, but as confessions. As a …

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Physician burnout: a crisis of conscience, calling, and collective responsibility

Physician
August 3, 2025

Introduction

The medical profession is grappling with a crisis of profound proportions. Burnout now affects nearly half of all practicing physicians. This is not merely dissatisfaction—it is emotional and moral exhaustion that undermines both physician wellbeing and patient safety. At its core, burnout signals a loss of connection to purpose, to colleagues, and to the healing relationship that defines medical practice.

Burnout manifests as emotional depletion, depersonalization of patients, and a diminished …

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How inspiration shapes the stories of our lives [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 2, 2025
YouTube video

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Adjunct professor of psychiatry Arthur Lazarus discusses his article, “How inspiration and family stories shape our most meaningful moments,” which presents a moving fictional story excerpted from his book. The narrative centers …

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