KevinMD.com

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

Most operational decisions in an independent medical or dental practice are made under time pressure with incomplete information. Hiring a practice management consultant is the decision practice owners turn to when they recognize that the operational gap exceeds their capacity to close. The mistake is not the decision to bring in outside help. The mistake is signing an engagement contract before disclosing what success looks like and verifying that the …

Physician voices

Why physician burnout is an exposure problem, not a failing

Dr. Paul Pers

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

Burnout is often described in terms of workload: long hours, full waiting rooms, administrative burden. Those factors matter. But they do not fully explain a pattern many of us recognize. Some days are manageable on paper, with reasonable patient numbers…

Burnout is often described in terms of workload: long hours, full waiting rooms, administrative burden. Those factors matter. But they do not fully explain a pattern many of us recognize.

Some days are manageable on paper, with reasonable patient numbers and no major crises, yet feel exhausting by mid-afternoon. Other days are objectively busier but somehow easier to get through. By mid-afternoon, between routine follow-ups and repeat prescriptions, the day can …

Conditions and diseases

Moral injury in health care: You can choose to stay

Sarah Bergakker, CRNA

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

When I read CRNA Christine King's recent article, "Why I left health care after almost 20 years," I saw many parts of my own story overlap with hers. Her story of moral injury and the heartbreak of working within systems…

When I read CRNA Christine King’s recent article, “Why I left health care after almost 20 years,” I saw many parts of my own story overlap with hers. Her story of moral injury and the heartbreak of working within systems that prioritize profit over human well-being is common among health care professionals.

Her decision to walk away to protect her health and peace is entirely valid. I almost did the …

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Physician voices

Why AI may make hospitalists more essential, not less

Dr. Muhammad Ali Aleem

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

For years, health care commentators have predicted that technology would reduce the need for hospitalists. The logic seemed straightforward: If artificial intelligence can analyze labs, interpret imaging, suggest diagnoses, and generate treatment plans, why would hospitals need thousands of physicians…

The prediction may have gotten it exactly backward.

Rather than making hospitalists obsolete, AI may accelerate a future in which hospitalists become the dominant physician …

Physician voices

The person behind the diagnosis every chart hides

Stella Awua-Larbi, MD

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

I never considered myself dismissive or noncaring. I entered medicine with a genuine desire to help, to make a difference, to care and to change outcomes. Like so many of my colleagues, my "why" had the same core message, rooted…

But somewhere between the first day of medical school and the years that followed, something changed. Not the …

Physician voices

The power of praise in medical education

Andrew Wilner, MD

July 13, 2026Jul 13, 2026

His words took my breath away. I was performing a routine task, but my seven-year-old son, Jack, could see I was struggling. "You can do it, Dad!" he cheered. Jack could have watched and said nothing. He could have walked…

His words took my breath away. I was performing a routine task, but my seven-year-old son, Jack, could see I was struggling. “You can do it, Dad!” he cheered.

Jack could have watched and said nothing. He could have walked away. He could have made a disparaging comment. Instead, he offered enthusiastic encouragement. His words warmed my heart and fueled my efforts, and I succeeded.

My son Jack has always seemed exceptional, …

Conditions and diseases

Why women must fight for hormone replacement therapy

Martha VanOrshoven

July 12, 2026Jul 12, 2026

I want my doctors to know as much about treating postmenopausal women using HRT as I have learned on my own. Women should not have to become research experts to effectively advocate for an established treatment many could benefit from.…

Thankfully, after months and months of back-and-forth, including paying out of pocket for expertise outside my medical plan, I am finally getting essential treatment that will not only improve the overall …

Physician voices

Clinical trial ethics fails the world’s poorest patients

Timothy Lesaca, MD

July 12, 2026Jul 12, 2026

The consent form says participation is voluntary. Yet in some global clinical trials sponsored by organizations based elsewhere and conducted in lower-resource countries, joining a study may be the only realistic way to see a physician, receive diagnostic testing, obtain…

This is not always coercion in the narrow legal sense. Rather, it reflects constrained …

Physician voices

What LEGO taught me about attention to detail

Neil Baum, MD

July 12, 2026Jul 12, 2026

I enjoy building LEGO projects with my grandchildren, because it is possible to sit with a grandchild for several uninterrupted hours, unlike video games or watching them scroll on cell phones. Our last project was a LEGO Technic set, which lets the child learn about engineering principles like cams, levers, and fulcrums. This project was estimated to take 7 to 8 hours to complete. We made the mistake of misplacing …

Physician voices

Why doctors leave medicine after a malpractice suit

Jordan Grumet, MD

July 12, 2026Jul 12, 2026

An excerpt from The Healthcare Heist: How Physicians and Patients Can Unite to Transform Healthcare. Every day, Francine said a little prayer for her doctor, sometimes upon awakening, often before drifting off to sleep at night. Her world had narrowed…

An excerpt from The Healthcare Heist: How Physicians and Patients Can Unite to Transform Healthcare.

Every day, Francine said a little prayer for her doctor, sometimes upon awakening, often before drifting off to sleep at night. Her world had narrowed significantly since Simon, her husband, passed away the year before. With no children or close friends, Francine relied heavily on Doctor G to make sure that her needs were met.

Initially, …

Health policy

Canada’s primary care investment is missing a North Star

Ivy Oandasan, MD

July 12, 2026Jul 12, 2026

Something remarkable is happening in Canadian health policy right now. After decades of incremental change, provinces and territories are making serious, sustained investments in primary care. These bilateral health agreements represent a genuine federal-provincial commitment, billions of dollars directed toward…

The people designing these investments care deeply. The intent is right. But when the accountability reviews come, how will …

Physician voices

The cost of caring in medicine, told in four songs

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

Every life has a shape. Mine revealed itself slowly, not through titles or milestones, but through four songs that arrived at the right moments, each one naming a truth I had lived long before I had language for it. These songs are not nostalgia. They are architecture. They explain how I became the physician, the father, the steward, and the man I became. This is the overture to my career …

Health policy

The corporatization of medicine, in salaries and beds

Brian Hudes, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

In the 1970s, the American hospital was, in the industry's own language, an "open workshop." A physician kept an office down the street, admitted patients to the hospital when they needed a bed or an operating room, and worked largely…

In the 1970s, the American hospital was, in the industry’s own language, an “open workshop.” A physician kept an office down the street, admitted patients to the hospital when they needed a bed or an operating room, and worked largely independent of whoever managed the building. The doctor made the medical decisions; the administrator kept the lights on and the ledgers balanced. It was an arrangement with obvious flaws (fragmentation, …

Physician voices

Medical board reform starts with restorative justice

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

George Orwell's Animal Farm remains a powerful parable about how systems created with good intentions can gradually lose their way when power concentrates and accountability weakens. The animals overthrow an exploitative farmer with dreams of equality, only to see new…

George Orwell’s Animal Farm remains a powerful parable about how systems created with good intentions can gradually lose their way when power concentrates and accountability weakens. The animals overthrow an exploitative farmer with dreams of equality, only to see new leaders adopt the very behaviors they once opposed. Medical regulation offers a real-world parallel, not a complete betrayal, but a system that sometimes drifts from its original balance between patient …

Physician voices

What a stuffed monkey taught me about comfort objects

Christine Marie Deeths, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

My daughter has a stuffed monkey named HaHaHa. He has been an important part of our family since she was about a year old. Before you make fun of his name, his name is HaHaHa because that is how a…

My daughter has a stuffed monkey named HaHaHa. He has been an important part of our family since she was about a year old. Before you make fun of his name, his name is HaHaHa because that is how a monkey talks. She takes his name very seriously and is not at all ashamed. He is, after all, her best friend. With a name like HaHaHa you cannot help but …

Health technology

Why AI scribes keep senior physicians in practice

Pat Williams

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

For years now, the burnout conversation in health care has been almost exclusively fixated on mid-career physicians, who are staring down decades of EHR documentation and quietly refreshing their LinkedIn profiles. These exhausted doctors in their prime are considering early exits, career pivots, and anything to get out from under the weight of it all. However, there’s another story playing out, quieter and in some ways more striking, among physicians …

Conditions and diseases

What Kyle Busch’s death reveals about sepsis

Philip Efron, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

The death of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, a relatively healthy 41-year-old, startled the public in late May when his severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis. While pneumonia is a common condition, Busch’s development of sepsis, when the body goes into organ failure after an infection, is highly unusual, as sepsis tends to affect patients who are either very young, very old, or have chronic medical conditions.

Despite being one of …

Physician voices

Standardized testing doesn’t measure the best doctors

DeAnna Pollock, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

"Who is the best resident in your program?" If you ask this question at a residency program faculty meeting, the answers are rarely about board scores. You'll hear discussions about the resident who stays calm during a difficult airway. The…

“Who is the best resident in your program?”

If you ask this question at a residency program faculty meeting, the answers are rarely about board scores. You’ll hear discussions about the resident who stays calm during a difficult airway. The junior resident who notices subtle clinical changes before anyone else does. The senior resident others trust at 2 a.m. when the attending is exhausted. The trainee who inspires confidence in …

Medical education

Why complex chronic illness slips through the cracks

Shaan R. Mody

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

He has been tired for eight months. Not the tiredness that follows a bad night of sleep, a hard week, or a season of stress. The kind that just does not lift. The kind that is still there after the weekend, after the vacation, after every reasonable explanation has been tried and discarded. He also has a cough that will not quit, something happening with his nails, unrelenting brain fog, …

Conditions and diseases

How corporate dentistry changes what you’re told

Abbey Gonzales, DDS

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

The chart is already open when my patient walks in. Forty-two years old, no significant medical history, last seen 18 months ago, not by me, but by a practice three miles down the road. I scroll through the treatment plan they sent her home with. Seven procedures and four of them major. A timeline that would have her back in a chair every six weeks for the next year. She …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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