KevinMD.com

Why transgender health care needs urgent reform and inclusive practices

Conditions

August 16, 2025

Everyone deserves informed, compassionate and respectful health care. As medical professionals, we have the profound privilege and responsibility to make a difference in the lives of others.

As a practicing Board Certified Plastic Surgeon in San Francisco, CA, I have dedicated my practice to serving trans women, trans men, non-binary and gender-diverse individuals. Through this practice, I have viewed discrimination at the most basic levels. Patients struggle to find primary care …

Why “the best physicians” risk burnout and isolation

Scott Abramson, MD

Physician

August 16, 2025

This is a famous teaching in the Talmud, which in the Jewish faith is the commentary on the Hebrew Bible. Why would the holy book of the Jews make such a proclamation? It turns out this is about arrogance. It is about humility. The “best doctors” may also be the most prideful. Their arrogance may prevent them from realizing they need help. If they do realize it, their pridefulness may …

Why the Sean Combs trial is a wake-up call for HIV prevention

Catherine Diamond, MD

Conditions

August 16, 2025

We are now waiting for sentencing in the Sean (P. Diddy) Combs trial. Onlookers reading about the trial could have various thoughts. Thoughts about how power corrupts behavior. Thoughts about how men manipulate women through violence and sex. There could be schadenfreude. There could be prurience. Me, I think about HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

You heard correctly, PrEP. When I hear testimony about multiple partners and escorts, my concern is for …

Why real medicine is more than quick labels

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Physician

August 16, 2025

An excerpt from Real Medicine, Unreal Stories, Volume 3.

The café was quiet, tucked between a shuttered bookstore and a yoga studio that only seemed to open during Mercury retrograde. It was the kind of place that didn’t advertise, which made it perfect for writers, wanderers, and today, two physicians who had long since discovered that stories, not stethoscopes, were the truest diagnostic tools.

Dr. Gary Handler stirred his coffee absentmindedly, …

New surge in misleading ads about diabetes on social media poses a serious health risk

Laura Syron

Conditions

August 16, 2025

A recent surge in misleading ads and AI-generated videos on social media and other online sites promoting bogus diabetes products, treatments and cures – often using fake endorsements, including from my organization Diabetes Canada – poses a serious health risk to people living with diabetes.

So far this year, Diabetes Canada has heard from at least 300 people who saw or bought fake products like smart watches claiming to non-invasively …

Stop medicalizing burnout and start healing the culture [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 15, 2025

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

Board-certified pediatrician and certified coach Jessie Mahoney discusses her article, “Medicalizing burnout misses the real problem.” She argues that the health care industry’s current approach to physician burnout is failing because it …

mRNA post vaccination syndrome: Is it real?

Harry Oken, MD

Conditions

August 15, 2025

This past week, an unhinged man in Atlanta committed an atrocity. He went to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with five guns and killed a policeman. He blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, and it is reported that he had been reaching out for mental health assistance for weeks.

Since January 2022, I have been interacting with national experts on a clinical problem that has hit …

Limiting beliefs are holding your career back

Sanj Katyal, MD

Physician

August 15, 2025

As physicians, we are highly motivated, educated, hardworking and compassionate individuals. We deserve the best that life can offer. I do not mean the nicest houses or fanciest cars (although there is nothing wrong with luxuries). What I am referring to is having the type of career that brings out the best in us. A work environment that allows us to share our gifts easily and effortlessly ultimately contributing to …

Breaking the martyrdom trap in medicine

Patrick Hudson, MD

Physician

August 15, 2025

In medicine, self-sacrifice is praised. We call it dedication. We call it loyalty. However, sometimes it is just exhaustion wearing a badge of honor, and it keeps us complicit in systems that harm us and our patients.

Burnout does not kick the door in. It just shows up quietly. One day you notice you have not called a friend back in weeks. Lunch, if you can call it that, is an …

Read more…

Breaking the martyrdom trap in medicine

What a Nicaraguan village taught a U.S. doctor about true care

Prasanthi Reddy, MD

Physician

August 15, 2025

Each year, I leave behind the electronic health record, performance metrics, malpractice fears, and the ever-present hum of burnout—and lead a medical mission trip—this year to Nicaragua. Along with a team of fellow volunteers, I carry only what we can pack: a few stethoscopes, essential supplies, and the will to serve.

We set up clinics in makeshift church halls with tin roofs in …

ChatGPT in health care: risks, benefits, and safer options

Erica Dorn, FNP

Tech

August 15, 2025

As technology becomes increasingly embedded in clinical workflows, many health care clinicians are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help lighten the charting load. One of the most buzzed-about tools is ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that seems like it can do everything from planning your next vacation to California, analyzing the best applications for a job, to writing your History of Present Illness (HPI) for a diabetic patient.

Before …

The critical role of nurse practitioners in colorectal cancer screening

Elisabeth Evans, FNP

Conditions

August 15, 2025

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second-deadliest cancer in the U.S.; however, screening rates remain too low due to a combination of lack of awareness, patient fear, and health care system barriers. Many patients don’t realize they are at risk because early-stage CRC has no symptoms, making screening the only way to detect and prevent disease progression.

As frontline health care providers, nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician associates/assistants (PAs) are uniquely positioned …

How motherhood made me a better scientist [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 14, 2025

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

Physician coach and medical school professor Kathleen Muldoon discusses her article, “How motherhood reshaped my identity as a scientist and teacher.” She explores what it means to be a “mother scholar” in …

Public health under fire: Vaccine battle hits federal court

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD

Physician

August 14, 2025

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

Today’s “controversy du jour” is prevention in health care. More specifically, vaccines and their role in preventing disease, disability, and death while promoting health and lifespan.

Prevention is the mother’s milk of health care. It is core to reducing illness and disease. Sadly, the udders producing that milk are drying up quicker than you can shake a fist at what is happening before our very …

How mindful leadership transforms physician wellness

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

August 14, 2025

The culture of medicine is shaped in quiet ways, by the way meetings begin, the pregnant pauses before a response, and the energy transmitted in emails sent and received. These seemingly insignificant experiences ripple outward, setting the tone for entire teams, shaping what is spoken and what is not, shaping what feels possible and what feels unsafe.

The culture of medicine is not an abstract force. It is built moment by …

How the quietly efficient physician can turn perception into power

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

Physician

August 14, 2025

In the bustling environment of modern health care, the loudest voices frequently attract the most attention. Yet, a special category of physicians who are less visible but no less significant exists: the efficient, quiet clinicians who are usually underestimated. This physician type blends high productivity with a calm demeanor, allowing skill and results to speak louder than words.

Underestimation can undermine leadership opportunities for quiet physicians because visibility may play a …

Are we repeating the statin playbook with lipoprotein(a)?

Larry Kaskel, MD

Conditions

August 14, 2025

In the late 1970s, a Japanese biochemist named Akira Endo discovered a compound from fungus that inhibited HMG-CoA reductase, the enzyme responsible for making cholesterol. It was an academic curiosity at the time. No one knew if lowering cholesterol would prevent heart attacks—it just lowered a number on a lab slip.

That compound eventually became lovastatin, and in 1987, Merck brought it to market with no proof of improved outcomes—only a …

Why our fear of AI is really a fear of ourselves [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 13, 2025

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

Physician executive Bhargav Raman discusses his article, “Why fearing AI is really about fearing ourselves.” He argues that the common doomsday predictions about artificial intelligence are a projection of our own human …

Why physicians with ADHD are burning out

Michael Carlini

Conditions

August 13, 2025

It is time we talk about a critical, yet often overlooked, factor contributing to physician burnout: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), particularly in those with high IQs and a history of academic and professional success.

Many physicians, often driven and intellectually gifted, develop sophisticated coping mechanisms that mask their ADHD symptoms for years, even decades. Their high IQ can, paradoxically, compensate for executive function deficits, allowing them to excel in demanding environments like …

The heart was fine—but something deeper was wrong

Dr. Riya Cherian

Physician

August 13, 2025

Sometimes, the stethoscope doesn’t catch what the heart is really saying.

It was just another morning during my surgery posting. I was reviewing pre-op workups when I was asked to assist with the echo evaluation of an elderly woman scheduled for a routine procedure. Her echo report flashed across the screen: smooth curves, rhythmic contractions, and valves opening and closing like well-oiled gates. The left ventricular ejection fraction was over 60 …

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts