Geriatrics

Preventive health care architecture: a global lesson

Conditions
December 8, 2025

Across conferences and journals worldwide, we repeat the same aspiration: Health care must shift from treating disease to promoting health. Yet most systems (regardless of country) remain architected around illness. Buildings, budgets, and workflows are still optimized for what happens after the body breaks down.

My perspective changed after speaking with a senior health care leader in Asia. He did not begin by discussing surgical innovation, emergency demands, or reimbursement challenges. …

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Physician boundaries: When compassion causes harm

Conditions
December 6, 2025

I used to believe that being a good physician meant being generous, flexible, and willing to bend the rules if it helped a patient. I don’t believe that anymore.

The lesson came from a young patient who walked into my traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic one afternoon, looking exhausted, embarrassed, and desperate.

He needed a powdered herbal preparation that cost around NT$7,500 (about $230). He stared at the ground and whispered, “Doctor, …

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Why your midlife choices will define your future health [PODCAST]

Podcast
December 1, 2025
YouTube video

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Gerontologist Michael Pessman discusses his article, “Why what you do in midlife matters most.” Michael explains why the ages of 45-55 are a critical window and final opportunity to build healthy habits …

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The patient carryover crisis: Why discharge education fails

Conditions
November 28, 2025

I still remember the feeling of relief standing by my uncle’s bedside. The monitors were humming with steady rhythms; the surgical team was congratulating themselves on a textbook procedure. By all clinical metrics, he was a success story. The intervention worked. The pathology was addressed. He was “stable.”

We celebrated his discharge as a victory lap. We trusted that the packet of papers in his hand (filled with appointments, medication schedules, …

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Aging parents and Thanksgiving: a gentle check-in

Conditions
November 19, 2025

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the cooking, the noise, the parade, the extra side dishes no one really has room for. Every year I tell my parents I want to “go bigger”: more food, more people, more traditions. And every year, my mother looks at me with a mix of love and exasperation and says some version of, “Can we please do a little less this year? My …

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How to reduce unnecessary medications

Physician
November 18, 2025

The greatest challenge for all who practice geriatrics is reducing polypharmacy, the addition of medications that either provide no benefit or cause harm to seniors. Millions of seniors end up on many medications that are not helping them and could be causing side effects. Geriatricians are the experts in what we call de-prescribing, cutting down on unnecessary medications.

The key reasons seniors end up on too many medications are the following. …

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The burnout crisis in long-term care

Conditions
November 17, 2025

Canada’s primary health care crisis has garnered news headlines and political attention, but an equally alarming crisis is ongoing in long-term care (LTC). More than five years after COVID-19’s deadly sweep through LTC homes, exposing long-standing deficiencies in funding, infrastructure, infection control, staffing and working conditions, many problems remain, driving a critical staffing shortage, burning out workers and impacting resident care. With the need for LTC …

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Protecting elder clinicians from violence

Conditions
November 15, 2025

The day before the attack, a senior physician at a Catholic university hospital in Taiwan sat with young medical students at noon, talking not about lawsuits or hospital finances, but about Brahms. He loved four-hand piano pieces, especially Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, and he would explain how two players must breathe together, listen to one another, and balance passion with discipline. For him, this was also a lesson about medicine: You …

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Who wants to live to be a hundred?

Conditions
October 29, 2025

Extreme longevity

People claim they want to live to be 100, yet is that a good thing? How you get there may make all the difference. Here’s my take on Blue Zones and the prospect of living to 100. “Blue Zone” is a nonscientific term popularized twenty years ago by Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer who studied five geographic regions where many people live to be over ninety or 100. …

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Why caring for a parent is hard for doctors

Conditions
October 19, 2025

I can sit with patients and families and talk about hospice, dementia, or end-of-life care without hesitation. Years of training as a physician and geriatric psychiatrist have prepared me for those conversations. But when my own parent needed care, all that training suddenly felt useless.

Medical knowledge didn’t shield me from fear or guilt. It didn’t stop the second-guessing that came with every decision. It didn’t help me navigate the family …

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How older adults became YouTube’s steadiest viewers and what it means for Alphabet

Conditions
October 19, 2025

A demographic shift in viewership

With the rise of streaming, one platform is surging to prominence. According to Nielsen’s March 2025 report, YouTube now commands the highest total TV usage share of any media company at 11.6 percent. This marks a 53 percent increase in viewership compared to two years ago. But it is not because of younger generations sensationalized “addiction” with phones. It is a surge driven largely by …

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Why what you do in midlife matters most

Conditions
October 16, 2025

Aging well is not solely a matter of luck or genes, in my experience as a gerontologist. The choices we make, the connections we nurture, and the support systems we build shape it. There is no better time than now to start—the latest research from 2024 and 2025 supports this.

Let us begin with a crucial insight: midlife is more important than we once imagined. In new studies, it has been …

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Should older physicians face competency tests?

Physician
September 28, 2025

Commercial airline pilots are required to retire at 65 under Federal Aviation Administration regulations. It’s not ageism; it’s safety. Yet physicians, whose decisions can be just as life-or-death, face no such requirement. As a former internist, chief medical officer, and hospital CEO, I have seen what happens when physicians practice past their prime. The results can be dangerous, heartbreaking, and entirely preventable.

When “going out on top” doesn’t happen

During my tenure …

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Why doctors struggle with family caregiving and how to find grace [PODCAST]

Podcast
September 10, 2025
YouTube video

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Physician Jessie Mahoney discusses her article “Why physicians struggle with caregiving and how to cope with grace,” reflecting on the unique challenges doctors face when caring for aging parents and ill family …

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Aging in place: Why home care must replace nursing homes

Physician
August 9, 2025

I have been a physician for 44 years.

Besides my office and hospital practice, I also make house calls for less mobile older adults. We all want to stay in the homes where we raised our children, cared for our gardens, and became part of the community. The reality is that we lack the tools and financial resources needed for seniors to “age in place.”

My house calls, though, have provided insights …

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Is “do no harm” the most misunderstood phrase in medicine? [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 7, 2025
YouTube video

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Psychiatrist Sabooh S. Mubbashar discusses his article, “Why ‘do no harm’ might be harming modern medicine.” He reveals that the principle “First, do no harm,” or Primum non nocere, is not part of the original Hippocratic Oath but a later, misattributed addition that has become a dangerously oversimplified slogan. …

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Eric Topol explores the science of super-agers and healthy aging [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 16, 2025
YouTube video

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Cardiologist and author Eric Topol discusses his article, “What super agers can teach us about longevity and health span,” which is an excerpt from his new book, Read more…

How community paramedicine impacts Indigenous elders

Conditions
June 26, 2025

Tucked along the edge of the frigid James Bay, Moosonee stands as one of Northern Ontario’s most remote and storied communities—a place often referred to as the “Gateway to the Arctic.” While towns like Thunder Bay or Rainy River echo similar titles, Moosonee carries its own unique distinctions.

This isolated town of about 3,000 people is shaped by its subarctic climate, deep cultural roots, and resilient spirit. Read more…

Why health care must adapt to meet the needs of older adults with disabilities

Conditions
June 14, 2025

We all know the population is aging, but did you know that close to half of all adults over age 65 in the U.S. have some kind of disability? The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) includes as a disability any “physical or mental impairment that limits one or more life activities” or a history or record of such impairment.

Thus, disabilities include: physical limitations such as mobility issues, pain, and fatigue; …

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What super agers can teach us about longevity and health span

Conditions
May 27, 2025

An excerpt from Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.

For many years, my colleagues and I have been fascinated by individuals like Mrs. L. R., who are so lucky to be so resilient to diseases. In 2008, we set up a research project called “Wellderly,” to study people who were at least eighty years old and had never been sick or had a chronic illness. It took almost six …

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