KevinMD.com

How to practice civility in medicine

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:00:38 +0000

“Labour to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” – Rule 110 from Rules of Civility, copied by George Washington as a teenager The most consequential gesture in a clinic visit is sometimes the smallest one: a hand resting on the door handle. The visit seems over. The plan

How to practice civility in medicine originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Why renaming PCOS to PMOS changes how we treat it

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:00:24 +0000

When I read that experts had officially renamed PCOS to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, my first reaction was not surprise. It was relief. After years of practicing medicine and six years of treating my own PCOS, someone had finally written down what my body had been trying to tell me the whole time. Six years

Why patient engagement platforms must reduce staff burden [PODCAST]

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 23:00:08 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Orthopedic surgeon Kevin J. Campbell discusses the article “Understanding Generation 2 patient engagement platforms.” Kevin discusses the article through a practical distinction between first-generation patient engagement tools that increase access but also increase staff workload, and second-generation platforms designed to answer

What telemedicine gets right that in-person care gets wrong

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:00:35 +0000

A patient called at 7:45 on a Tuesday morning. She was a nurse, working nights. She had confirmed flu, her employer needed documentation within 24 hours, and the nearest GP clinic had a three-week wait for a routine appointment. Getting seen that day would have meant taking a taxi to an urgent care waiting room,

AI fabricated references threaten medical evidence

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:00:57 +0000

Generative AI systems can create references to papers that do not exist and make them look real. In medicine, a fabricated or poorly verified reference is not simply a bibliographic error. It weakens the chain of evidence on which reviews, guidelines, teaching, and clinical judgment may depend. A recent article by Topaz and colleagues in

GLP-1 coverage cuts hit disabled patients hardest

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:00:30 +0000

As a physician, telling my patients “no” never gets easier. In some cases, I have good reason, such as declining to increase opioids because of the risk of side effects. In other cases, I can only gently tell patients, “The health care system doesn’t want to pay.” In the coming months, I will be saying

The difficult patient is really a difficult encounter

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:00:11 +0000

There are some patients whose names change the atmosphere of a day before they have even entered the room. You see the name on your schedule and feel it immediately. It may be a glance at the clock, a slight tightening in your chest, or the quiet hope that the visit might somehow be shorter

How to lighten your mental load by asking better questions

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:00:45 +0000

The heaviest things we carry are rarely the tasks. They are the standards we never thought to question. My morning mental routine: Who is picking the kids up? What are we having for dinner? What time do I need to be at work, and how much is on my plate there? What time do I

Health care burnout is a structural problem, not resilience

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:00:12 +0000

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

Numbness after a mastectomy no one warns you about [PODCAST]

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 23:00:48 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Most women lose feeling in their chest after a mastectomy, and almost no one warns them ahead of time. Emily Hansen, a patient advocate who has spent nearly two decades in health care communication working with surgeons and breast cancer survivors,

What every primary care physician should know about BasicMed

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:00:20 +0000

Recently, I called the office of my primary care physician. I asked the person who answered the phone, “Will the doctor sign an FAA BasicMed form?” The person said, “Let me check,” and returned a minute later. “She cannot. You need to see an FAA doctor.” I tried to explain that she could, but I

What happened to teamwork in nursing?

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:00:15 +0000

We have spent years talking about what is wrong with nursing culture. “Nurses eat their young.” New nurses leave too soon. Burnout is everywhere. Tension on the floor feels almost expected. We have named it. We have seen it. Most of us have lived it. But naming it hasn’t fixed it. If anything, the conversation

What happened to teamwork in nursing? originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Why ethical leadership in medicine is so rare

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:00:38 +0000

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

Why ethical leadership in medicine is so rare originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Diversity in cardiology is a power problem, not a pipeline

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:00:33 +0000

A Black medical student with top board scores applies to cardiology fellowship. She has no research mentor, no letter from a famous cardiologist, and no one to tell her which programs to target. She does not match. The system calls it merit. But was it? Health inequity is often discussed at the bedside, focusing on

What leaving clinical medicine taught me about identity

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:00:54 +0000

An excerpt from I Left Anyway: The Life I Was Supposed to Want. The schedule looked ordinary, which almost made it harder to explain. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The computer screen asked me to log in again because five minutes of stillness was enough for it to decide I had disappeared. There was no

How compliance quietly captured medical ethics

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:00:17 +0000

There is a fifth pillar of American medical ethics. It was never voted on, never formally adopted, and never appears in Beauchamp and Childress. It governs clinical conduct more reliably than the other four combined. It is called compliance. What the compliance framework has accomplished is not the erosion of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and fidelity.

How compliance quietly captured medical ethics originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Why your treatment plan falls apart after you leave the doctor [PODCAST]

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 23:00:44 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Most doctor visits do not fail in the room. They fail after you walk out, holding a plan and no clear idea of when something has gone wrong enough to call back. In this episode, retired surgeon and patient advocate Alan

A former FDA official on antidepressants and suicide risk

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:00:25 +0000

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Division of Psychiatry until 2024. Martha Rosenberg: Recently, in the Cato Institute journal Regulation you and co-authors Andrew Mosholder, MD and Tarek Hammad, MD wrote that the FDA’s antidepressant warning did not kill American children through discouraging

The advance care planning conversation nobody starts

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:00:12 +0000

We are exquisitely good at managing the aging emergency and strikingly bad at preventing it. That is a system design choice, not a clinical inevitability. Every physician who cares for older adults knows the pattern. A patient we have seen for years, stable, independent, managing, arrives one day transformed by a single event: a fall,

Should the law force doctors to prescribe on demand?

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:00:27 +0000

When the president announced that Tylenol caused autism (it does not), he commented that leucovorin, a cancer medication, treated the condition. His remark had an outsized impact on the public, despite counter-statements by autism specialists. I can understand the response. What mother-to-be would take the chance, even if untrue, that Tylenol may cause autism? Or