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A cure for aggressive lymphoma exists, and most patients never get it [PODCAST]

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 23:00:42 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! A treatment exists that can cure aggressive lymphoma after chemotherapy has failed. Only about two in ten eligible patients receive it. Manali Kamdar is clinical director of lymphoma services at the University of Colorado Anschutz, and Paolo Strati is an associate

A military pediatrician inside the nuclear readiness system

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:00:08 +0000

Every physician accumulates evaluations during a career. Most are read once and forgotten. Decades later, while reviewing my Air Force officer evaluation reports from Minot Air Force Base, I discovered something unexpected: a record not merely of performance, but of ideas that anticipated changes in pediatric care years before they became formal policy. The reports

3 choices that protect physicians in the attention economy

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:00:45 +0000

Medicine has developed a new mental health illness of the “attention economy.” The term was introduced by psychologist and Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon, who argued that an abundance of information creates a scarcity of attention, making human attention an increasingly valuable resource. Physicians always depended on attention to the patient, trainee, colleagues, and the

Medical ethics principles do not decide hard cases

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:00:07 +0000

“I know the treatment probably won’t work,” a patient nearing the end of life tells the doctor. “I want to try anyway.” The patient understands the risks but still hopes for a little more time. The physician wants to honor that hope while worrying that side effects could make the patient’s remaining days more painful.

How physician resilience is built in a busy pain clinic

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:00:10 +0000

Walk into any busy pain clinic and the weight lands before you sit down. The pages never stop. The waiting room is packed with people who have already been through too many doctors. Chronic suffering hangs in the air. And that is only the visible load. Beneath it sits a quieter, more relentless set of

Palliative care in the ICU: what the metrics never count

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:00:10 +0000

“I called palliative care because I needed to free up the bed. Otherwise, I could have taken care of this dying patient myself.” The ICU attending said it standing at the nurses’ station, thumbing through a chart on a rolling laptop cart, already moving toward the next name on his list before I could answer.

Abortion bans and intimate partner violence rise together

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:00:02 +0000

Pregnancy is a well-documented risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV), with homicide reported as a leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women in the United States. As abortion policy has shifted in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson (the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade), researchers have begun examining how abortion access

Why CDC opioid guidelines get the overdose data wrong

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:00:07 +0000

On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, the author spoke briefly at a hybrid conference conducted by the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C. This was only the most recent such “listening session” conducted over a ten-year period. And from the first government speaker onward, the meeting reflected many of the

Supplement country-of-origin labels hide the real source

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:00:11 +0000

We previously discussed the certificate of analysis myth and economically motivated adulteration in the dietary supplement industry. This article focuses on the basics of how the supply chain of dietary ingredients works and why it is critical for clinicians always to consider the possibility of supplement-induced adverse side effects such as herb-induced liver injury (HILI).

Why clinical AI limitations are not a physician problem

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:05 +0000

The most consistent advice physicians receive about clinical AI is that we should be more careful with it. Verify the output. Treat it as a draft. Structure the input. Build verification into practice as the defining skill of the coming decade. All of this is good counsel. None of it addresses the problem the same

Monetize clinical expertise without becoming an influencer

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:00:49 +0000

Every nurse, pharmacist, PA, and physical therapist in the country has to complete continuing education (CE) hours to keep their license. Those courses don’t write themselves, and accreditation rules mean they can’t be written by just anyone. They have to come from a clinician with the credentials to back up what’s being taught. That’s a

Doctors were told to be blind to the cost of care [PODCAST]

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 23:00:08 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! He counts four wounds in American medicine. Patients rarely bring up the first one, which is what health care costs. Narinder Singh Parhar is a physician with more than three decades in internal medicine, hospital medicine, and intensive care. This episode

How AI can cut administrative burden and wait times

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:00:55 +0000

Health care in America is broken. We have an aging population that requires complex, ongoing care. We have rising costs. We have a workforce of clinicians who burned out. We don’t have enough clinicians. Today, the average wait time to schedule a new physician appointment in a major U.S. city is 31 days. That is

What sepsis in The Pitt gets right, and what it misses

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:00:11 +0000

In my free time, I try not to consume too much work-related content. When you’re in a medical business, manufacturing devices used for sepsis and septic shock patients, the last thing you want is to be reminded of sepsis outside of work. So I was very surprised when I found myself binging The Pitt all

Jerina Gani, MD, MPH, on primary care burnout: a KevinMD subscriber spotlight

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:45 +0000

Jerina Gani, MD, MPH is a primary care physician in Boston, trained in internal medicine, with about twenty years in practice. She has published nine essays on KevinMD since July 2025 and has been a guest on The Podcast by KevinMD three times. Nearly all of that work makes one argument from her own schedule:

A poem for anyone tired of productivity culture

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:00:19 +0000

abandoning ship swim with the gentle undulations of our stardusted oceans as they sensitively surrender drops of dew up to the contemplative clouds to convey ancient intricacies in the dew’s quiet rest, buoyed patiently by petals who also must obey the call of gravity. my dear mechanical world (welded so clumsily by ego) how blindly

A poem for anyone tired of productivity culture originally appeared in KevinMD.com.

Hurricane season is a fifth season, and medicine has to plan for it [PODCAST]

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 23:00:13 +0000

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! In South Louisiana, hurricane season is treated like a fifth season of the year. Angela C. Johnson explains what that means for physicians and patients. She is an internal medicine physician and member of the American College of Physicians Board of

AI governance metrics need a door-to-balloon time

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:00:11 +0000

During the following year, in one of the hospitals, an algorithm will be automatically taken out of service. Either the sepsis model will drift below the performance level at which it was approved, or the monitoring process will detect the tool failing for one subgroup of patients even though the overall figures remain satisfactory, and

Charitable giving for physicians: 7 strategies for 2026

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:00:28 +0000

Americans give hundreds of billions of dollars to charity each year, making philanthropy a defining feature of our national culture. That generosity benefits more than the organizations and communities receiving support: Research suggests that giving can also improve the donor’s happiness, sense of purpose, and connection to others. Our government actively encourages this behavior through

Post-stroke pain management: what the 2026 guidelines say

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:00:54 +0000

Pain management is rarely a blanket approach. Effective relief depends on the specific type of pain, its underlying mechanism, the patient’s comorbidities, age, functional goals, and overall clinical context. This principle is especially important after stroke, where pain is common, often under-recognized, and can significantly hinder rehabilitation, sleep, mood, and quality of life. Stroke survivors