Paul Dranichnikov is a physician in Sweden.

AI gave patients answers. They still need judgment.

Health Technology
August 26, 2026

The modern physician is no longer competing with disease alone. The new adversary is expectation: limitless, instantaneous, and increasingly shaped by algorithms.

In the span of a decade, the patient has evolved. First came “Dr. Google, MD” offering a chaotic but empowering flood of information. Then “Dr. PubMed, MD, PhD” sharpening the curious into quasi-specialists fluent in abstracts and endpoints. Now we face the almighty “Prof. AI”: tireless, confident, and available …

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AI gave patients answers. They still need judgment.

Why the digital rectal exam fails prostate cancer screening

Conditions and Diseases
July 20, 2026

For decades, the digital rectal exam (DRE), the traditional “finger test,” has been a routine component of prostate screening. It is quick, inexpensive, and engrained in medical culture. But the question is no longer whether we can do it. It is whether we should. With PSA testing, advanced imaging, and refined risk stratification, routine DRE in asymptomatic men is increasingly indefensible.

Low sensitivity and limited value

Recent studies show that DRE has …

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Why the digital rectal exam fails prostate cancer screening

Health care burnout is a structural problem, not resilience

Physician
July 8, 2026

The cold coffee cups are the least of it. They sit abandoned on desks and in reporting rooms, small monuments to interruptions, unfinished tasks, and priorities that shift by the minute. Beside them stands the inevitable glass of lukewarm water, another reminder that even the most basic needs are often postponed in the service of someone else’s urgency.

What is far more difficult to ignore are the sleepless nights. The anxiety …

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Health care burnout is a structural problem, not resilience

The attention economy is starving public health

Physician
June 8, 2026

We are living in an era where attention, not information, is the scarce resource. And what we pay attention to (not what we claim to value) reveals the architecture of our priorities.

Consider a few comparisons that, though deliberately absurd, tell a deeper truth. We now have more Marvel movies than major classes of antibiotics. The world produces more aspiring pop singers than there are widely used chemotherapy regimens. Strangely enough, …

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The attention economy is starving public health

The medical case for teaching kindness in early childhood development

Physician
May 8, 2026

As a physician, I encounter humanity at its most unguarded. I have held trembling hands, delivered devastating news, and witnessed emotions stripped of pretense. In exam rooms and hospital corridors, patterns emerge with unsettling consistency. Under stress, fear, or pain, humans default to self-protection. We become impatient. Defensive. Sometimes cruel. Not because we are irredeemable, but because survival instincts speak loudly when vulnerability is exposed. Kindness, by contrast, does not …

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The medical case for teaching kindness in early childhood development

The death of medical swagger: How physician status has changed

Physician
March 27, 2026

Fifty years ago, being a doctor was like being a cross between a wizard and a rock star. People would whisper in awe when you walked by: “There goes Dr. High-and-Mighty, saving lives and curing everything from a runny nose to a broken heart!” My dad used to tell me stories about how he would get waved past security, cut to the front of lines, score doctor discounts, and park …

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The death of medical swagger: How physician status has changed