Nicole M. King, MD

Nicole M. King is an anesthesiologist and intensivist.

Adriana Smith’s story: a medical tragedy under heartbeat laws

Physician

June 20, 2025

I’ve felt an overwhelming need to write for about a month now. I struggled to find the right words as recent events in medicine and society have created a constant state of confusion and distress. Most notably, I have found it increasingly difficult to understand or process how some medical professionals can remain silent or indifferent in the face of ethical crises. At times, the anger this evokes leads me …

How medicine is evolving: Bridging generational divides in the profession

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

February 19, 2025

I recently came across an ongoing “discussion,” or rather aggressive bantering, in an online physician platform regarding the old guard versus the alleged newer, more entitled, and lazy generation of doctors. Years ago, I would have more staunchly fallen on the side of the old guard. Though I am a solid elder millennial, my “bootstrap” upbringing and Navy career fully encouraged the concept of medicine as a calling vice a …

Navigating COVID: a journey from academic intensity to healing

Nicole M. King, MD

Conditions

April 25, 2024

Springtime. Blooming trees. Green grass. Cool winds. Sunny skies. COVID.

That is where my mind wanders every year since 2020, when the season turns. I flash back to the drive between the hospital and my home. Every evening after fighting a losing battle at an academic institution hell-bent on ignoring and downplaying the horror that was about to breach our borders. I was a fighter then — maybe more in that …

Chiefs fan to gun violence advocate: How football and tragedy reshaped my mission

Nicole M. King, MD

Policy

March 12, 2024

Those who know me well and even those who don’t are aware of my passion and commitment to the Kansas City Chiefs. As an avid fan who was born and raised in KC, I can assure everyone that there were many dark years and even decades prior to the current situation that have allowed us to live on high for the past few years. Football has been an outlet for …

Navigating life stories and medical decisions

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

November 24, 2023

As a physician, I am given both the gift and the burden of another’s most intimate moments or even their indiscretions. There is a cloak of invisibility that wraps around a patient and me when behind a closed door. Almost as if the concept of guilt, innocence, opportunity, loss, life, and death are all present together with us in a room, while the rest of the world goes on outside. …

On the front lines of COVID-19: the untold sacrifices and heroic efforts of health care professionals

Nicole M. King, MD

Conditions

June 14, 2023

There is a phenomenon sweeping across various medical circles on social media that is forcing people to address accusations from those who were not on the front lines of COVID at the beginning of the pandemic. Though I have refused to pay much attention to the details, I have become more and more enraged at the audacity and frank ignorance that it takes to judge when not in the arena. …

The surgeon-anesthesiologist relationship: Learning to work together in the OR

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

April 10, 2023

Last week I walked past him sitting outside of the OR. It was morning, before all of the first start cases, but he had been there all night. I already knew this. Two back-to-back transplants overnight. He, a surgical fellow, me, a critical care anesthesiologist who was a surgical resident over a decade ago. I could see the circles under his eyes that seemed to take up over half of …

Working in medicine isn’t an all-or-nothing situation

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

October 10, 2022

I have recently undergone (yet another) transition and am now back to living at home with my family full time instead of in an apartment half of the time. So wonderful most of the time … I think.

It is amazing and a very big wake-up call that I missed many of my children’s lives. And that those two years I will never get back, but it’s also just so hard …

Physicians and patients are now pawns in a political game

Nicole M. King, MD

Policy

July 11, 2022

This morning I had a migraine. I should have known it was coming. I now have complex migraines and was having word-finding difficulty yesterday, which is a harbinger for me. How could I have known that my soul had known before my mind had, that it had known we were about to rip away a standing protection for half of the U.S. population and dress it up as a state’s …

Raising the white flag isn’t about surrendering to a broken system

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

March 20, 2022

So here I am. I just finished updating my CV so I can apply for associate professor this fall.

And I hadn’t touched it since last year. It needed a lot of work.

I look at this, and I think, “Wow.”

And then I also think: What about all the “stuff” that’s not on there?

The difficult pregnancies.

My son’s struggles his first 36 months of life.

My husband’s year-long deployment as a new mother of …

We have been forced into a mass casualty scenario

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

January 11, 2022

I spent the past year and a half of this pandemic getting a degree in quality, safety, and leadership. Though there were days, nights, and weeks where I simply did not know how I could finish the work or go on, I never realized how much I needed the work to help me process what is happening around us. To help me navigate my rage at the state of our …

COVID and Afghanistan: a war on 2 fronts

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

September 4, 2021

I’ve faced this disease since it arrived. I flew into the storm in order to face it head-on, leaving behind my family and a hospital filled with denial and petulant resistance to the horror that was to come. While in New York, I worked alongside men and women who were working at the edge of their capabilities in a heroic and inspiring way. I watched what can happen when a …

Health care workers betrayed: Mask mandates were lifted too early

Nicole M. King, MD

Conditions

July 27, 2021

A year ago, I started writing. I wrote to process what I had seen and done and to prepare for what I knew was to come. It was inevitable. Humans would return to their normal activities, and despite mine and so many others’ advice, would do so without utilizing mitigating behaviors or respect for others. We knew it was coming, and it did. The summer surge, followed by the darkest …

We don’t have to leave medicine to heal

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

April 27, 2021

So many of us keep looking around and thinking, what now? Meaning now that “it’s” over, what is next. Are we supposed to go back to that life from before? Is that what is happening? Isn’t that what we are seeing on social media and in the lay press. The return to normalcy. The “freedom” to get our lives back. The right to our liberties and pursuit of happiness.

But what …

Read more…

We don’t have to leave medicine to heal

Talk to me. Talk to us. Talk about That Topic.

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

February 4, 2021

This topic always takes me back. To the time my life stopped and flipped upside down. I never understood how people could drop to their knees in public and have a moment of agony or grief. I guess the pain I had felt up to that moment was not strong enough to knock me to my knees. But that day … it was enough.

The repeated missed phone calls. The wailing …

I keep going because I miss them. And I miss me.

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

January 26, 2021

I have written a lot about how COVID has changed me. Changed medicine. Changed America. I have written about it as a pivot point. A way to build a better medical infrastructure. I have alluded to how we can use innovation, advocacy, and listening to turn 2020 into an opportunity for change. How we can use it as a way to finally admit that health disparities exist, Black Lives Matter, …

The safety of patients is dependent on our commitment to a just and change-oriented mindset

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

October 24, 2020

Over the last seven months, the state of medicine, as we have known it in the United States, has been found out. Disjointed, disheartened, and failing. For every ounce of energy we have put into patient safety, quality improvement, and preventing medical errors over the past 20 years, we have simultaneously drained the soul from medicine by turning our work into a commodity, with a price attached to every action …

The only way to save medicine, save our country, and to save ourselves is to pivot

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

September 15, 2020

A few months ago, I signed up for a virtual conference for women in medicine. It’s a group of women, over 10,000 of us, who have watched me and supported me through the past two years of my career. Two years of struggle. Two years of personal and professional pain. Two years of opportunity for growth, and two years of numerous setbacks that were only overcome with all of their …

Nicole M. King, MD

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