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The psychology of hero worship: When admiration overrides reason

Conditions

March 20, 2026

Emotional contagion and crowd psychology are powerful forces that shape human behavior in large gatherings. In India, where collective identity and reverence for public figures often run deep, emotional responses within crowds may take on added intensity. This reflection draws on an incident from Tamil Nadu to illustrate how collective emotion can sometimes override proportion and common sense, with implications for community safety and well-being.

This may sound amusing today, but …

Florida health care legislation 2026: top bills to watch

Del Carter, MD

Policy

March 20, 2026

As Florida’s 2026 state legislative session reaches the halfway point, there are several health care bills up for discussion. While every session seems to have its own theme, common issues repeat themselves year after year. Here are some of the top bills involving health care in the Florida Legislature today.

AI regulation in insurance

Artificial intelligence (AI) and the concern for its regulation continues to be a hot topic. Mandatory Human Reviews …

How junk food shrinks your brain and fuels depression

Marc Arginteanu, MD

Conditions

March 20, 2026

Let us cut to the chase: Your daily dose of junk food is not just padding your waistline; it is quietly eroding the most complex organ in your body. The evidence is no longer scattered case reports or instinctive hunches. It is an ever-growing stack of human epidemiology, neuroimaging, and mechanistic biology. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are associated with depression, a shriveling brain, systemic inflammation (which crosses the blood-brain barrier), gut …

The 3 levels of psychiatric treatment: biological, psychosocial, moral

Mark D. Kilgus, MD, PhD and Nicolas Badre, MD

Conditions

March 19, 2026

One can consider that psychiatric treatment occurs on three levels: biological, then psychosocial, and then moral-existential. First, if needed, the psychiatrist prescribes medication to rectify biological abnormalities. Second, the therapist facilitates psychotherapy to address psychosocial problems. Third, the therapist uses the clinician-patient …

Violence against health care workers: the silence must end

Carleigh Beriont and June Zanes Garen, RN

Policy

March 19, 2026

I spent decades as a nurse, choosing a profession grounded in care, patience, science, and the belief that showing up for others matters, even on the hardest days.

In 2017, that belief was shattered when I was physically assaulted at work. I survived, but I carry the scars of that day, both visible and unseen.

I have worked hard to heal through therapy, reflection, and learning how to trust my body again. …

Why early detection matters: Transforming lung cancer care [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 19, 2026

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

This article is sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company.

In this special sponsored episode from Eli Lilly and Company, I am joined by Dr. …

Why clinician education must prioritize nutrition training

Beata Pasek, EdD

Conditions

March 19, 2026

When I began coordinating GI research in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), I noticed something unexpected: Second- and third-year GI fellows, bright, motivated, steeped in medical science, had received little to no formal training on diet’s role in disease. For many, nutrition was treated as peripheral, “something dietitians handle,” rather than core physician knowledge.

This is not a reflection on their ability or commitment. It reflects how medical education is structured. U.S. …

Why residents unionize: systemic reform, not entitlement

Paz De la Torre, MD

Physician

March 19, 2026

I read a recent JAMA Viewpoint on medical trainee unions not just with disappointment, but with a deep sense of recognition. It presents a narrow and skewed interpretation of unionization, framing it not as a response to systemic dysfunction but as a threat to medical education and hospital finances.

We do not unionize for marginal gains or lighter schedules. We are responding to an embedded educational hierarchy that excludes us …

Moving beyond the false binary of medicine as a calling

Christie Mulholland, MD

Physician

March 19, 2026

There is a resident doctor on TikTok named Julia who is also a raver. She posts about her training, and her weekends, dancing, festivals, après ski, living a full and visibly joyful life outside the hospital. The comments on her videos are glowing. “I would love to have a doctor like you.” “You seem like a real person.” A lot of patients are not looking for a self-sacrificing doctor who …

Physician financial risk: Balancing capacity and tolerance

Stanley Liu, MD

Finance

March 19, 2026

It keeps us up at night. We pay thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to protect ourselves from it. Our hospitals or practices have entire departments dedicated to managing it.

It is “Risk.”

Avoiding risk is an inherent part of modern medicine. Every day, we practice CYA documentation, ensure our patients sign informed consent forms, and do everything we can to minimize the risk that someone will sue us …

Navigating the cybersecurity challenges of artificial intelligence in medicine

Francisco M. Torres, MD & Purab Patel

Tech

March 19, 2026

Artificial intelligence, or “AI,” is fast becoming indispensable to modern medical practice. Whether they are using complex prognostic algorithms to model possible disease outcomes or they are upgrading medical bookkeeping applications, physicians employ various forms of AI to aid in daily tasks. And while these tools can produce unprecedented benefits, the increased incorporation of AI in medical practice also brings with it a number of key cybersecurity challenges. Medical information, …

When side effects are actually a cry for help with medication costs

Shuchita Gupta, MD

Physician

March 19, 2026

“Doc, I cannot sleep well at night since I started taking the blood thinner (apixaban/Eliquis).”

“Hmm, that is not a typical side effect of the blood thinner. Have you considered any other changes to your routine that could be affecting how you sleep at night?”

“Doc, I also have joint pains and diarrhea since I started the blood thinner. Can I stop it?”

(The patient has had joint pains and diarrhea pre-dating the …

Politics and fear have replaced science in U.S. pain management [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 18, 2026

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

Patient advocate Richard A. Lawhern discusses the article “U.S. opioid policy history: How politics replaced science in pain care.” Richard argues that for decades, public policy on pain treatment has been driven …

How punitive board tactics are harming pain management physicians

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Physician

March 18, 2026

A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Databases (PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Westlaw, LexisNexis) and gray literature were searched from January 2010 to November 2025 using terms related to medical board discipline, pain management, and overreach. Eligibility included studies, legal cases, and reports on disciplinary actions, due process violations, or consequences for physicians/patients.

Findings of 1,847 records, 42 were included (28 journal articles, eight legal cases, six reports). Key abusive …

AI in clinical documentation: the hidden risk of automation bias

Gagandeep Rai

Tech

March 18, 2026

The schedule is already behind. It is always already behind. In a family medicine clinic on an ordinary Tuesday, I open a chart and watch an AI tool do what it was built to do: draft the note, compress the story, produce an assessment that reads clean, confident, complete. For a moment it feels like relief, the kind you learn not to trust. Then the woman across from me says, …

Can AI scribes give clinicians time to teach again?

Lynn McComas, DNP, ANP-C

Tech

March 18, 2026

If the computer is getting more of our attention than the patient, we have a problem. It is not a small annoyance. It is not just part of the job. It is pulling clinicians away from patients, draining attention from the exam room, and quietly chipping away at the quality of clinical education. We can debate workflow, efficiency, and EHR optimization all day long. But here is what I see …

Surviving stage 4 breast cancer: a 10-year journey of hope

Tami Berczuk

Conditions

March 18, 2026

As I approach the 10-year anniversary of hearing the words “I am 99 percent sure you have breast cancer,” I have many emotions: gratitude, fear, anxiety, hope. Having been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2016, then learning it had metastasized to my liver, so stage 4, I had so many questions and so much uncertainty.

Since then, it has been a journey of self-reflection, relationship evaluation, insurance negotiations, family …

Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change

Stacey Funt, MD

Physician

March 18, 2026

In lifestyle medicine, we know the script: eat better, move more, manage stress, sleep well, connect with others. Many of us know what to do. But knowledge alone does not create transformation. What does? Identity. That quiet internal voice that tells us who we are and what we are capable of. Research by Daphna Oyserman and colleagues shows that identity drives behavior …

Health care cyberattacks expose a critical national security failure

Kristen Cline, BSN, RN

Tech

March 18, 2026

Everything we know about keeping people alive under pressure we learned from war. Triage was invented on a Napoleonic battlefield. Tourniquets, hemostatic dressings, damage control resuscitation, the golden hour itself. Military surgeons figured out how to stop bleeding and move casualties while the ground was still shaking, and civilian medicine inherited every lesson. The emergency department and the battlefield have always been adjacent theaters, running the same protocols under different …

The hidden cost of long-term care policy for family caregivers

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

March 18, 2026

Every spring, millions of families across Chinese communities around the world travel back to their hometowns for Qingming Festival, often translated as “Tomb-Sweeping Day.” It is a centuries-old tradition of honoring ancestors. Highways fill with traffic. Families gather at gravesites to clean tombstones, burn incense, and leave offerings of food. On the surface, Qingming is about remembering the dead. But in many homes, the holiday quietly exposes a different reality: …

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