Children’s health

1,495 articles · Since 2011

Articles, page 3

Becoming a physician mother changed how I practice

July 26, 2026Jul 26, 2026

As pediatricians, we enter patients' lives at moments of uncertainty. You learn how to listen for what is said and what is not said. You walk guardians through fevers, developmental milestones, and the thousand small worries that come with raising…

As pediatricians, we enter patients’ lives at moments of uncertainty. You learn how to listen for what is said and what is not said. You walk guardians through fevers, developmental milestones, and the thousand small worries that come with raising a child. Over time it all feels comfortable. Routine.

Then you become the parent. The questions you have answered so many times drip with new urgency, and your own uncertainty. Sleep, …

Conditions and diseases

3 bedside tools for adolescent overdose prevention

Stephen M. Sandelich, MD

July 24, 2026Jul 24, 2026

The call came at 2 a.m. Not about a new patient. About one who had left. She had been in my department three days earlier. Eighteen years old. Came in with chest tightness after a night out. Tox screen negative.…

The call came at 2 a.m. Not about a new patient. About one who had left.

She had been in my department three days earlier. Eighteen years old. Came in with chest tightness after a night out. Tox screen negative. Discharged. Three days later, fentanyl overdose. Dead. I have replayed that visit more times than I can count.

New data published in Emergency Medicine News puts a number on how many families …

Conditions and diseases

Newborn brain development starts at discharge

Cindy Parente

July 21, 2026Jul 21, 2026

Every day, hospitals across America perform one of medicine's greatest achievements. A family arrives anxious and uncertain. A baby is born. Skilled physicians, nurses, therapists, and support staff guide mother and child safely through pregnancy, birth, and recovery. Before discharge,…

Every day, hospitals across America perform one of medicine’s greatest achievements.

A family arrives anxious and uncertain. A baby is born. Skilled physicians, nurses, therapists, and support staff guide mother and child safely through pregnancy, birth, and recovery. Before discharge, families receive careful instruction on feeding, safe sleep, car seats, medications, warning signs, and follow-up care.

In Connecticut, that commitment to the discharge moment has grown even further. Hospitals are now sending …

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A doctor in South Sudan on a trillion-dollar Friday

Dr. Buga Charles George Kenyi

July 21, 2026Jul 21, 2026

Recently, a rocket company went public on the Nasdaq, and by the time the bell closed, its founder had become the first person in history worth a trillion dollars. I read about it on a borrowed phone outside the pediatric…

I’m not writing this out of anger. I want to say that clearly. I …

Physician voices

What a stuffed monkey taught me about comfort objects

Christine Marie Deeths, MD

July 11, 2026Jul 11, 2026

My daughter has a stuffed monkey named HaHaHa. He has been an important part of our family since she was about a year old. Before you make fun of his name, his name is HaHaHa because that is how a…

My daughter has a stuffed monkey named HaHaHa. He has been an important part of our family since she was about a year old. Before you make fun of his name, his name is HaHaHa because that is how a monkey talks. She takes his name very seriously and is not at all ashamed. He is, after all, her best friend. With a name like HaHaHa you cannot help but …

Physician voices

Physician recertification is a revenue model, not quality

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 9, 2026Jul 9, 2026

I spent my career in developmental-behavioral pediatrics building programs, training physicians, and caring for children and families who needed clarity, steadiness, and advocacy. I stayed current because my patients deserved it, not because a board demanded proof. Long before I retired, I made a deliberate decision: I opted out of recertification in both general pediatrics and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

I stepped away for a simple reason. I no longer practiced in …

Physician voices

Why ethical leadership in medicine is so rare

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 7, 2026Jul 7, 2026

Medicine likes to imagine that leadership follows predictable paths. We talk about "career tracks," "pipelines," and "development pathways" as if the profession reliably produces clinicians who can lead research, deliver complex care, build systems, and teach the next generation. But…

Medicine likes to imagine that leadership follows predictable paths. We talk about “career tracks,” “pipelines,” and “development pathways” as if the profession reliably produces clinicians who can lead research, deliver complex care, build systems, and teach the next generation. But anyone who has spent a lifetime inside the machinery knows this is a myth. These domains rarely overlap. In fact, they often conflict.

And yet, every so often, a career emerges …

Conditions and diseases

The quiet skills that actually save a medical career

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 4, 2026Jul 4, 2026

Medicine trains us to master physiology, pharmacology, and diagnostic reasoning. We spend years learning how to manage ventilators, interpret imaging, and navigate complex clinical decisions. But the skills that actually determine whether a physician survives a career, or is broken by it, are almost never taught. They are quiet skills. Uncelebrated skills. Skills that determine whether you can practice with dignity in a system that often makes dignity difficult.

After four …

Physician voices

Bearing witness in medicine before my voice goes quiet

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 1, 2026Jul 1, 2026

I am approaching a period of my life marked by multiple surgeries, procedures that may limit my voice for a time, or perhaps silence it altogether. I do not mention this to invite sympathy. I mention it because bearing witness requires speaking while one still can. It requires naming the truth before the body quiets, before recovery reshapes the days ahead, before the opportunity to speak freely is interrupted by …

Physician voices

Why pediatric direct primary care belongs at the door

Trey Williams, MD, MBA

June 18, 2026Jun 18, 2026

It starts the same way every time. A parent sends a text at 10:47 p.m. Their two-year-old has had a fever for three days. The urgent care closed at nine. The ER is 45 minutes away and will cost them…

It starts the same way every time.

A parent sends a text at 10:47 p.m. Their two-year-old has had a fever for three days. The urgent care closed at nine. The ER is 45 minutes away and will cost them $400 before anything is done. The on-call nurse line put them on hold. So they do what parents in 2026 do: They scroll, they worry, and they wait for morning.

I built …

Conditions and diseases

Pediatric gender transition needs evidence, not ideology

William Malone, MD

June 13, 2026Jun 13, 2026

One of America's largest and most influential doctor groups earlier this year advised their members to stop conducting surgical interventions on minors who experience gender dysphoria. In a new position statement, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that "there…

One of America’s largest and most influential doctor groups earlier this year advised their members to stop conducting surgical interventions on minors who experience gender dysphoria.

In a new position statement, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that “there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio” for those interventions. This announcement represents a watershed moment for the American medical establishment, one that could help spare thousands of vulnerable children …

Physician voices

3 Air Force leadership lessons from three commanders

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

June 9, 2026Jun 9, 2026

During my Air Force years, I served under three commanders with three very different personalities. One was methodical and procedural. One was operational and instinctive. One was strategic and future-focused. They disagreed about many things, but they agreed about one:…

At the time, I didn’t think much about it. I was young, busy, and focused on …

Physician voices

Physician advocacy can close the gap between appointments

Samantha Jackson Dilts, MD

June 7, 2026Jun 7, 2026

My father's melanoma diagnosis arrived on a Tuesday. By Thursday, we had a plan of care. By the following Monday, I was back at work seeing my own patients, pretending the world had resumed its normal shape. But it hadn't.…

My father’s melanoma diagnosis arrived on a Tuesday. By Thursday, we had a plan of care. By the following Monday, I was back at work seeing my own patients, pretending the world had resumed its normal shape. But it hadn’t. Not really. Because his cancer didn’t pause between appointments, didn’t stop growing or spreading, and neither did the fear, the questions, or the quiet unraveling that comes with navigating a …

Conditions and diseases

The Medicaid reckoning for applied behavior analysis

Steven Merahn, MD

June 5, 2026Jun 5, 2026

The growing scrutiny of applied behavior analysis (ABA) within Medicaid is widely misunderstood within the behavior analytic community as an attack on the profession or its science. It is neither. The root cause is structural. Medicaid programs, whether state-managed or administered through managed care organizations, operate on fixed annual allocations called “premiums,” funded by a blend of federal and state dollars. Each child’s premium is essentially a predetermined budget meant …

Physician voices

DEA fear is reshaping how doctors prescribe

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

June 2, 2026Jun 2, 20262

For more than three decades, I prescribed Schedule II stimulants to children and adolescents with ADHD. I did it carefully, consistently, and always within clinical standards. Yet throughout those years, I carried a quiet, persistent fear, not of harming patients,…

That fear wasn’t irrational. It was structural.

The DEA’s enforcement posture has long treated volume as suspicion, clinical judgment as potential misconduct, …

Physician voices

How to raise teenagers ready for the real world

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

May 30, 2026May 30, 2026

After sharing numerous thoughts on pain management and the health care system, which are topics I am deeply passionate about, I decided for a moment to step out of my role as a physician and share some personal insights I encounter regularly as a parent raising teenagers. At times, this journey can feel even more challenging than practicing medicine.

Raising a teenager today feels like navigating a beautiful storm. One moment, …

Physician voices

The quiet loss of dignity in medicine

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

May 25, 2026May 25, 2026

When institutions begin to fear the consequences of telling the truth, the First Amendment becomes a parchment promise rather than a living principle. Medicine is not immune to this cultural shift. Physicians who once spoke freely about patient safety, training standards, and systemic failures now hesitate, not because they lack conviction, but because the corporate structures around them punish candor. The result is a profession that has lost not only …

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The quiet loss of dignity in medicine

Physician voices

The medical case for teaching kindness in early childhood development

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

May 8, 2026May 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 …

Physician voices

What physicians and dragonflies share in resilience and agility

Gita Balakumar, MD

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

Do you ever feel like a hovering helicopter, eyes fixed on every corner of the horizon, yet swift and nimble to the next need, while trying to stay aloft with a missing blade? If you have ever stood in the middle of a shift, a surgery, a conversation, or a decision that could not wait, and felt all of that at once, then you already know what it is to …

Conditions and diseases

Treating adolescent opioid use disorder with buprenorphine

Chris Buresh, MD, MPH

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

I recently reviewed the case of a 17-year-old who came into the emergency department (ED) after a friend found him unresponsive at a party. He had taken what he thought was a Percocet. It was fentanyl. He survived because his friend called 911 and paramedics arrived with naloxone in time. But here is what happened next: nothing. He was observed, medically cleared, and discharged. No one offered him naloxone to …

Children’s health

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