Surgeons writing on KevinMD about the craft and the culture of surgery: training and who holds the knife, the operating room and its checklists, outcomes and whether the public should see them, the robot and now AI, women surgeons, and what it is like to be sued over an outcome rather than a decision. Three maintained records draw on this archive: Surgeons and surgery: what surgeons say, in their own words, Residency: what residents and attendings say, in their own words, and Medical malpractice: what physicians say, in their own words.

Surgical judgment: the skill no one sees from the gallery

Physician
September 16, 2026

When I was younger in surgery, I watched hands. I watched how senior surgeons held an instrument, how little unnecessary movement they made, how calmly they worked around a vessel that could turn an orderly operation into an emergency within seconds. Technical mastery was visible. You could stand across the operating table and recognize it.

I wanted that kind of control. Most young surgeons do.

In my first year of cardiovascular surgery …

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Surgical judgment: the skill no one sees from the gallery

Breast implant removal leaves patients paying 3 times

Conditions and Diseases
September 8, 2026

Former cosmetic surgeon Robert Yoho, MD, after retiring from medical practice in 2019, became an author and health care whistleblower and recently addressed the “explant” trend in which breast implants are surgically removed. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 306,196 women bought breast augmentation in 2024. In 2021, the FDA added a boxed warning to implants cautioning that they are linked to breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma …

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Breast implant removal leaves patients paying 3 times

Dialysis access and heart failure need one care plan

Conditions and Diseases
September 7, 2026

For decades, vascular care has focused on solving problems within the circulatory system. When an artery narrows, we restore blood flow. When a patient requires dialysis, we create reliable vascular access. These interventions are critical, but they represent only part of the picture.

Today’s vascular patients rarely have disease confined to a single organ system. Many are living with chronic kidney disease, heart disease, and diabetes simultaneously. As these conditions become …

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Dialysis access and heart failure need one care plan

Cosmetic dentistry abroad is not about the lowest price

Patient
September 2, 2026

I have spent years in front of cameras. Fashion events, interviews, photographs, social media, and meetings are part of my professional life, so I have always been conscious of my smile. I wanted it to look beautiful, modern, and natural, not like a row of extremely white, identical teeth. I wanted a smile that suited my face and made me feel confident whenever I laughed, spoke, or saw myself in …

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Cosmetic dentistry abroad is not about the lowest price

The question doctors on social media should ask first

Social Media in Medicine
September 1, 2026

It sounds like a ridiculous question. Until you’re a doctor with a social media following and you know the parents of the child you’re worried about are watching.

Before COVID, I loved the spontaneous, ridiculous moments that broke up the intensity of hospital life. Flash mobs with nurses. Dancing with OR staff. Laughing with ICU doctors. Small moments of silliness among people doing very serious work.

Then COVID hit, and the dancing …

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The question doctors on social media should ask first

Hospital peer review needs recusal rules, not assumptions

Physician
August 27, 2026

Hospital peer review is one of medicine’s most important mechanisms for protecting patients and maintaining professional standards. Physicians possess the clinical expertise necessary to evaluate the work of other physicians, particularly when questions involve complex procedures, specialty-specific judgment, or unusual complications.

But this structure creates an unavoidable tension. The physicians most qualified to evaluate a colleague may also be the physicians who compete with that colleague for patients, referrals, operating-room access, …

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Hospital peer review needs recusal rules, not assumptions

Finding purpose in patient care after a wartime injury

Conditions and Diseases
August 18, 2026

An excerpt from One Pocket.

I reported to Walter Reed Army Medical Center on August 25, 1969. The complex was in Bethesda, Maryland, about thirty minutes from the White House. Founded in 1909, it had cared for every president of the United States, along with members of Congress and the Supreme Court. It had 1,122 hospital beds and treated more than 750,000 patients a year.

I was assigned as a medical …

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Finding purpose in patient care after a wartime injury

Reforming hospital peer review requires independence

Physician
August 18, 2026

An adverse peer-review determination is one of the most consequential events in a physician’s professional life. When a hospital revokes clinical privileges or imposes a suspension exceeding thirty days, federal statute mandates a report to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB).

In today’s consolidated health care landscape, an adverse NPDB report is an indelible mark with near-insurmountable consequences. It frequently triggers reciprocal investigations by state licensing boards, prompts malpractice carriers to …

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Reforming hospital peer review requires independence

How to verify health insurance coverage abroad before care

Conditions and Diseases
August 15, 2026

One of the most misleading words in international medical care is “worldwide.”

A patient sees it in an insurance certificate and assumes the rest will be simple: Find a hospital abroad, show the policy card, and let the insurer settle the bill. Then the hospital asks for pre-authorization, the insurer asks for a treatment plan, and the international department asks whether it is in network. “Worldwide” has become a series of …

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How to verify health insurance coverage abroad before care

Medical travel coordination is a patient-safety job

Conditions and Diseases
August 9, 2026

Booking a hospital appointment is usually the easy part of medical travel. The difficult work begins when the patient asks what the appointment is supposed to accomplish, who has reviewed the records, and what happens if the answer is “Treatment is not appropriate.” Those questions determine whether a patient is making an informed decision or simply moving between health systems with a suitcase full of hope and an incomplete medical …

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Medical travel coordination is a patient-safety job

Automation bias in medicine already has doctors deferring

Physician
August 8, 2026

At the hospital where I operate, most of the pediatric subspecialists never walk through the door. Endocrinology, hematology, infectious disease: The consult happens by phone. They read the chart, they ask questions, they leave a plan. I would like to tell you the plan is usually right. I have no way to know that. The hospitalist examined the child. The specialist did not, and there is no second version of …

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Automation bias in medicine already has doctors deferring

Gratitude in medicine: the people who carried me

Physician
August 5, 2026

Reason

I find that this exercise of thanking and expressing gratitude makes my journey to the land of the unknown joyful. I thought I should do this when I have a clear mind and good health. I am teaching the residents now to understand its value. I am writing this now so that I am not too late to thank all those who helped transform my life. I want to show …

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Gratitude in medicine: the people who carried me

Why becoming a senior resident is so uncomfortable

Physician
July 31, 2026

I don’t know when things started taking the wrong turn.

There are moments when words refuse to come, when they arrive after the moment they are needed, or sometimes do not arrive at all. It is not that I lack thoughts. I have them. Too many, sometimes. But when they are demanded in a precise moment, when someone expects an explanation, a response, a justification, my mind becomes strangely distant from …

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Why becoming a senior resident is so uncomfortable

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Put the patient first: a surgeon’s best lesson

Physician
July 24, 2026

As the anniversary of my father’s death approaches, I have been thinking about him as both a father and a surgeon. Those two parts of his life were never entirely separate, at least not for me. My surgical education began long before medical school, residency or fellowship, because I grew up watching how he approached his work, how he treated people and how seriously he took the responsibility that came …

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Put the patient first: a surgeon’s best lesson

The 3 flight-line lessons operating room safety missed

Physician
July 5, 2026

Surgery borrowed the checklist from aviation and stopped there. Three more lessons from the flight line, on distraction, automation, and fixation, are still waiting to be picked up.

On September 11, 1974, Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 descended toward Charlotte in light fog. The cockpit voice recorder captured the crew talking about politics and used cars while the DC-9 sank below its assigned altitude. The airplane hit terrain short of the …

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The 3 flight-line lessons operating room safety missed

The cataract surgery waste hiding in the trash bin

Conditions and Diseases
July 5, 2026

Gowned and gloved, mask in place, surgical technician Savannah Stanford prepares the operating room. She tears open plastic wrapping with a practiced pop and rip. The sound, sharp as a pistol crack, cuts through the silence before the day’s first case. Blue drapes spill over the table; syringes clatter against stainless steel. “A lot of wrappers,” she said. “A lot of plastic. Some things come in multiple plastic wrappers, not …

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The cataract surgery waste hiding in the trash bin

When local doctors disappear, patients pay the price [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 1, 2026
YouTube video

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

A patient with a dying leg won’t drive 20 miles for care. In Devin Zarkowsky’s town, that’s not a hypothetical. Vascular surgeon Devin Zarkowsky runs a solo office-based practice in a San Diego County town where peripheral arterial disease patients had nowhere …

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When local doctors disappear, patients pay the price [PODCAST]

How to rethink old breast implants as your body ages

Conditions and Diseases
June 25, 2026

Not long ago, a woman came into my office with breast implants that were forty-one years old. The implants were older than I am.

As a plastic surgeon who specializes in breast and body procedures, that is the longest I have personally seen implants last. And honestly, my first reaction was probably the same reaction most people would have: disbelief. Forty-one years is an incredibly long time for any medical device …

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How to rethink old breast implants as your body ages

Psychological screening for cosmetic surgery is overdue

Conditions and Diseases
June 25, 2026

Cosmetic surgery is no longer a fringe conversation in Ghana. From rhinoplasty to liposuction and body contouring, aesthetic procedures are increasingly normalized, and this is mostly shaped by social media, global beauty standards, and a growing private health care market.

But beneath this rising demand lies a quieter, more complex question: What if the problem is not the body, but the mind’s perception of the body?

To be fair, many experienced cosmetic …

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Psychological screening for cosmetic surgery is overdue

Why ambient listening in medicine made me more human

Physician
June 24, 2026

When I was training to become a surgeon, there was an unspoken belief that the operating room was the pinnacle of the profession. The OR was where you proved yourself. Clinic was something to get through on the way to surgery later in the week. At least, that’s how it often felt to me.

Now, ten years into practice, what some would call mid-career, I’ve realized something unexpected: The clinic is …

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Why ambient listening in medicine made me more human

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