Episodes

Your patients are asking ChatGPT what's wrong with them before they call your office, and getting an answer in seconds. In this episode, Tod Stillson, a board-certified family physician, medical device inventor, and health care entrepreneur, explains how AI chatbots became the new waiting room, and what that means for the doctor who used to be the first call. You will hear why patients turn to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini instead of waiting days for a reply, how AI companies are racing to own the...

A patient asked for her knee surgery by its brand name. She used the term perfectly. She just had no idea what it actually meant. Orthopedic surgeon Cory Calendine, who does nearly 700 to 800 hip and knee replacements a year, returns to unpack how marketing is quietly reshaping what patients ask for in the exam room. This episode is based on his article "Knee replacement marketing undermines informed consent," published on KevinMD. You will hear why trademarked procedure names now get searched m...

Two families raise their kids in completely different ways. Both are doing it right. So why do clinicians so often assume one of them is doing something wrong? Najat Fadlalla, a developmental behavioral pediatric fellow, returns to unpack how cultural bias creeps into parent coaching, the first-line, evidence-based approach for children with or at risk of ADHD. This episode is based on her article "How cultural competence transforms modern parent coaching," published on KevinMD. You will hear wh...

A doctor spoke up about problems in his residency, and months later he was walked out in front of his patients. In this episode, Vasilii Khammad, a physician and researcher who came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar, shares what happened after he and fellow residents raised concerns about their training program. You will hear how the feedback against him was anonymous and never documented, how he was pushed toward a psychiatric evaluation he never asked for, and how he was removed with...

A nurse survived a violent assault at work, then watched her hospital treat her like a liability, not a victim. In this episode, June Garen, a retired psychiatric and operating room nurse and author, and Carleigh Beriont, a former union organizer who teaches U.S. history and public policy, explain why violence against nurses and doctors gets treated as part of the job. You will hear what actually happens to a health care worker after an assault, why so many facilities do not even track these inc...

What if burnout is the wrong word for what doctors are actually going through? Gus W. Krucke argues that calling physicians burned out treats a systemic failure as a personal one, and that physicians are not failing, they are grieving a profession that has changed around them. Using a malpractice case over a reversal drug, he shows how doctors are judged in retrospect for decisions made under pressure in the moment, and how that fear drives a culture of self-protection. He draws a sharp line bet...

When a family finds a loved one with a severe bedsore in a nursing home, they often sue. But these cases are rarely decided by the wound itself. They are decided by what the medical record shows. Tracy Liberatore is an attorney and former physician assistant who does expert witness work on these claims, and she explains why a four-step test, not the size of the ulcer, determines whether it is ruled avoidable or unavoidable, and why age and other health problems do not by themselves let a facilit...

If you have acne, irregular periods, and trouble with your weight, the cause may not be three separate problems. It may be one condition affecting your whole body. PCOS, long called polycystic ovary syndrome, was recently proposed for renaming to reflect its hormonal and metabolic roots, and Oluyemisi "Yemi" Famuyiwa explains why the old name sent patients to separate specialists who each treated one symptom and missed the whole picture. Famuyiwa is a double board-certified reproductive endocrin...

You keep getting sinus infections, so you keep getting antibiotics. What if the antibiotics are part of the problem? Franklyn R. Gergits is a board-certified otolaryngologist and fellowship-trained otolaryngic allergist with about 30 years in practice. This episode is based on his article "Recurrent sinus infections leave damage beyond your sinuses," published on KevinMD. He explains why 2025 guidelines shifted from reaching for antibiotics to treating inflammation, and how repeated courses can ...

The pharma rep with the free lunch is gone. What replaced it is harder to see, and aimed at you and your doctor. Martha Rosenberg is an investigative reporter who has worked at two medical schools and two medical ad agencies, seeing drug marketing from the inside. This episode is based on her article "3 new pharma marketing tactics every physician should know," published on KevinMD. Reporting from a pharma conference, Martha breaks down three tactics drug makers no longer hide. You will hear how...

What happens when you ask ChatGPT to study every conversation you have had and tell you who you really are? One medical student did that, and what it told him changed how he sees his future in medicine. Jack Tiller is a medical student in an MD-PhD program, with doctoral work in neuroscience and neurodegeneration. This episode is based on his article "The reluctant achiever: Navigating identity in medical training," published on KevinMD. You will hear why the AI labeled him a reluctant achiever,...

Your kidney test comes back normal after surgery, so you must have recovered. Except the damage can be hiding in plain sight. John Erbey is an epidemiologist by training and the founder and CEO of Roivios, where he works at the intersection of science and business. This episode is based on his article "When normal creatinine hides post-operative kidney injury," published on KevinMD. He explains why kidney function is dynamic, like the heart, and why the reserve you lose during surgery rarely ret...

You feel guilty for calling in sick, taking earned vacation, or setting a boundary at work. What if that guilt was never really yours? Christie Mulholland is a palliative care physician and certified physician development coach. This episode is based on her article "Why your physician guilt may not actually be yours," published on KevinMD. She unpacks what psychoanalyst Laurence Blum called hidden guilt, the kind that often begins in childhood and turns capable kids into compulsive achievers who...

When your hospital decides how to use AI, will you be in the room or will you be handed whatever someone else picked? Physicians have done this before, letting insurance and then EMRs reshape medicine before they reacted, and AI is the next force they cannot afford to ignore. Augusta Uwah is a hospitalist, physician advisor, and founder and CEO of ClinEfficiency Pro, where she builds AI tools for hospitals and revenue cycle management. This episode is based on her article "Why physician-led AI a...

When a doctor shows real kindness, does it change how a patient heals? For Randy McNeely, the answer arrived the day his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and the calm, caring doctors who treated her became part of her recovery. Randy McNeely is a motivational speaker known as Captain Kindman, joined by physician advocate and physical therapist Kim Downey, who has survived cancer three times herself. This episode is based on their article "Compassionate health care transforms the patient journey,"...

Fertility specialist and Montgomery Fertility Center founder Oluyemisi "Yemi" Famuyiwa discusses the article "What no one tells you about fertility, from a doctor." Yemi discusses the article through a compassionate look at the emotional, biological, and practical realities patients often discover only after struggling to conceive. She explores fertility myths, reproductive timing, menstrual cycle awareness, egg health, sperm production, male factor infertility, patient anxiety, and the hope and...

Women doctors joke about being cursed with every complication, but what if the job itself is quietly damaging their health? Jessie Mahoney, a pediatrician and certified coach, returns to share her own story of pregnancy complications, an ICU stay, and a string of surgeries she spent years writing off as bad luck. This episode is based on her article "Women physicians' health is paying the price of medicine," published on KevinMD. You will hear why so many women physicians carry chronic illness, ...

Medicare will pay your practice to keep chronically ill patients out of the hospital, so why do most practices leave that money unused? Rachel Yates, a registered nurse and health care executive, joins to explain two reimbursement programs Medicare introduced in 2024, Community Health Integration and Principal Illness Navigation, and why two years later most practices still are not using them. This episode is based on her article "Patients pay when Medicare care coordination codes go unused," pu...

When a patient's heart stops, the person leading the code is running on memory alone, and memory fails under that kind of pressure. Michael Peck is an anesthesiologist and retired faculty member at George Washington University who spent more than 30 years watching skilled clinicians get cognitively overwhelmed during a cardiac arrest. In this episode he explains why the problem is not a lack of training but the hard limits of human attention, memory, and decision making during a crisis. This con...

Medicare for All keeps dying in Congress. So what would actually get the major players to agree on universal coverage? Health care journalist Ken Terry returns to lay out a different model, one that keeps insurance companies in the system while putting primary care doctors back in charge of basic care. This episode is based on his article "A Medicare for All alternative that keeps insurers in," published on KevinMD. You will learn why he believes Medicare for All is a political non-starter and h...

For 23 years, an emergency physician stayed calm in the chaos and held the line. Then one night he sat in the hospital parking lot, unable to start his car and drive home. In this episode, Kenneth Scott Burnham shares how depression crept up on him gradually, how his clinical training gave him the tools to deny it for years, and what he learned once he was the patient instead of the doctor. He explains why the health care system is good at stabilizing people in crisis but nearly indifferent to w...

For 15 years, a primary care physician saw more than 22 patients a day and slowly lost herself to exhaustion. It followed her home every night and onto every vacation. In this episode, Jerina Gani explains how she broke that cycle by doing the opposite of what administrators push: she saw fewer patients, gave each one more time, and found her life again. The counterintuitive twist is that slowing down did not cost her money. By billing more accurately and resolving problems in a single visit, sh...

Clinicians are treated as invincible, so when their own mental health suffers, many stay silent. Namit Choksi, a physician entrepreneur and health care executive, joins to explain how credentialing forms and a culture that treats wellbeing as a perk push doctors to hide depression, anxiety, and substance use until they reach a breaking point. You will hear why disclosing a behavioral health condition can threaten a clinician's malpractice and life insurance and trigger a fit-for-duty review, why...

Clinicians are pushed to do more with less, until many quietly conclude they are not enough. J. C. Sue, a family medicine physician and adjunct faculty member, returns to unpack where that belief comes from and why it does so much damage across medical school, residency, and practice. You will hear how the business side of medicine and a competitive training culture teach doctors that they must be perfect, why serving beyond your real limits leaves patients, employers, and clinicians all worse o...