The Podcast by KevinMD

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 wipe out your good bacteria, let resistant bugs and biofilms take hold, and leave you feeling reinfected when the real issue is inflammation. You will hear how this 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 AI apps track where a prescriber sits on the "prescription journey," how disease mongering and...

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, and how a single line about having many possible lives but only one timeline stopped...

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 returns even when creatinine looks fine. You will hear what a JAMA Network Open study found about...

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 feel wrong for resting. You will hear how administrators and insurance companies can step into the role an authority figure...

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 adoption is essential for health care," published on KevinMD. You will hear why doctors who...

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," published on KevinMD. You will hear why a doctor's presence and reassurance can matter as much as the treatment...

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 grief that often coexist during the fertility journey. This episode examines why being healthy does not guarantee pregnancy, why both partners need evaluation, and why fertility care must address the human...

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, early cancers, and infertility at rates that feel too common to be coincidence, and why almost no...

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," published on KevinMD. You will hear who actually qualifies, the patients you already see every day who keep cycling back through the ED...

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 conversation is based on his article "Cognitive overload in cardiac arrest is a human problem," published on KevinMD. You...

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 how a two-part financing system could split basic care from major medical coverage. He explains...

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 what comes next, where the long wait for care...

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, she ended up earning more than she did full time. You will hear why "see...

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 this fear creates a vicious circle that hospitals only notice once it is too late, and why losing a single clinician can...

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 off, and what a healthier reframe sounds like: you are human, not infinite, and that is enough...

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 routine patient questions without pulling every message into an inbox. He explains why portals, apps, messaging systems, and automated content often fail when they turn staff into message processors, and why the next generation of platforms must be built around clinical protocols, physician preferences, clear escalation boundaries, and staff-relieving workflows. This episode explores patient engagement, patient portals, health care...

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, joins to explain a consequence of survivorship that stays largely hidden. You will learn why loss of sensation is nearly universal after mastectomy, why nerves are among the slowest tissues in the body to recover, and why patients so often feel guilty raising it with the surgeons who saved their lives. Hansen describes the real safety risks that...

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 P. Feren explains why "call me if it gets worse" is not real guidance, and what clear instructions actually look like. He argues that sharing responsibility with patients only works when both sides share clarity, because a threshold no one defined is one no patient can act on. You will hear why patients delay care when they are...

Doctors spend over a decade training and then quietly leave a fortune on the table when they handle their own money. In this episode, economics professor Hernan Moscoso Boedo explains why high income and years of schooling do not make physicians good investors. He compares the way doctors avoid the stock market to the way some people distrust vaccines, not because they understand the science, but because they do not trust the system protecting them. This episode is based on his article "Why your doctor invests like a vaccine skeptic," published on KevinMD. You will hear why physicians invest...

Most physicians who feel stuck in a job could actually afford to leave. They just can't stomach what the worst week might look like. Stanley Liu, cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician career choices come down to risk tolerance." You will hear the gap between risk capacity (what your finances can actually absorb) and risk tolerance (what you can emotionally accept), why the two are not the same, and how the "first do no harm" reflex bleeds from clinical decisions into career decisions. He walks through the specific moves that make a worst-case scenario acceptable...

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 local to go, and Jason McKittrick is the executive director of the Office-Based Facility Association. They discuss the KevinMD article "Why local care matters for peripheral arterial disease." You will hear how the Medicare physician fee schedule pays hospitals for big-ticket equipment but pays solo doctors out of the same bundled rate they use to cover staff and...

A week off does not fix burnout. The same problems are waiting when you get home, and the same person is walking back into them. Stacey Funt is a radiologist who runs a boutique wellness adventure travel company, mostly for women in their 40s through 60s, including a high share of physicians. She discusses the KevinMD article "Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change." You will hear the science behind identity-driven behavior change: awe, novelty, supportive groups, meaningful challenge, and a clear before-and-after marker she calls a temporal landmark. She tells the story of a...

Calling a doctor a provider sounds harmless. The American College of Physicians says it isn't. Janet Jokela, former treasurer of the American College of Physicians, professor, and medical educator, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style." She walks through how the word "provider" entered medicine through Medicare in 1965 and ended up lumping physicians together with hospitals and insurance companies as interchangeable "providers of services." You will hear why the Latin root of compassion (to suffer with) names something physicians do that corporate entities do not, why the ethical obligations physicians take on...

Most clinical research treats patients like data points. What gets lost when researchers stop listening to the people they study, and what does it cost the science itself? Niharika Singh is a biomedical engineer and pre-medical student with research experience at Genentech, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and the Keck School of Medicine, and a global ambassador with the United Nations SURGhub. She discusses the KevinMD article "Patient involvement transforms modern clinical research." You will hear the difference between treating a patient as a data set, engaging them as a collaborator, and inviting their emotional and lived experience into the study design...

A 30 to 40 percent Medicare cut just hit the doctors who keep your local hospital running, and the policy meant to stop hospital monopolies is accelerating them instead. John Birkmeyer, president of the medical group at Sound Physicians and a former Dartmouth health services researcher, discusses the KevinMD article "Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients." You'll hear how CMS quietly slashed the practice expense portion of Medicare payments for the first time in 20 years, hitting independent hospitalists, ER doctors, and critical care groups with net cuts of 6 to 10 percent. You'll learn why CMS aimed at hospital-owned practices but instead...

Your child is messaging neo-Nazis on Discord, role-playing the Columbine shooting on Roblox, or making fan art of mass killers, and you have no idea. That is the pattern Matthew Turner, an emergency medicine physician at Hershey Medical Center, is now seeing in his pediatric ER, where parents bring in children after spotting a chat-message leak that exposes months of online radicalization. He discusses the KevinMD article "The true crime community is radicalizing kids online." You'll hear how the true crime community pulls kids as young as eight from casual interest into obsession, imitation, and sometimes real-world violence, with...

Imagine being penalized for delivering good care to your frailest patients. Medicare's quality scoring program was built for healthy outpatients, not the elderly residents of nursing homes, but it is the system doctors who round in skilled nursing facilities are forced to play. Steve Buslovich, a physician executive and geriatrician, discusses the KevinMD article "How Medicare's MIPS impacts skilled nursing facilities and clinicians." You'll hear how MIPS metrics conflict with the five-star quality measures facilities must report, why tightly controlling A1C in frail elders can cause harm, and how documentation discrepancies between physicians and facilities create financial and...

The words doctors use during fertility care can wound the patient sitting across the desk. "Failed cycle." "Poor responder." "Ovarian failure." For a woman already carrying the grief of a child she has never had, those words can feel like nails in a coffin. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, a fertility specialist, argues that infertility grief is compounded by cultural stigma and by clinical language medicine rarely audits. This episode is based on her article "The emotional impact of infertility is grief unspoken," published on KevinMD. You will hear why up to 40 to 50 percent of infertility cases involve a male factor, why...

Patients are being cut off from medications they need, doctors are afraid to prescribe, and the reason traces back to political donations most Americans never see. Richard A. Lawhern, health care educator and patient advocate, joins us to explain how lobbying money shapes health care legislation and what patients can do about it. This episode is based on his article "Health care lobbying is destroying the U.S. system," published on KevinMD. You will hear why $4.5 billion was spent influencing the 2024 election, how undisclosed donors block reforms like single payer, and why nearly a quarter of every health care...

Most of the people deciding where billions of health care dollars get invested have never treated a patient. Harsha Moole, a physician scientist and health care venture capital founder, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article "The crash cart that taught me physician-led investing." You'll hear how a single overlooked workflow problem on a hospital crash cart became a multi-hospital company, why physician-led groups screen every deal through three gates of clinical, regulatory, and reimbursement diligence, and how doctors can get involved without leaving their day job by advising startups, advising venture funds, or co-investing through a physician network...

Most doctors were never taught how to sit with a patient's grief, anger, or fear without absorbing it. Eva Minkoff, a health care executive coach, and Kim Downey, a physical therapist and physician advocate, join Kevin to discuss their KevinMD article "How regulating clinical empathy prevents physician burnout." You'll hear why physicians who lean too far into patient emotion burnout, why those who shut down lose trust and treatment adherence, and why both paths end in the same exhaustion. Eva walks through her three-step framework (recognize the feeling, distinguish it from the story, address the emotion first) and explains...

Medical students who skip writing their own reflections are not lazy, they are surviving an irrational system. Kathleen Muldoon, a coach and professor, returns to discuss what student AI use in medical education actually reveals about the curriculum, the hidden incentives behind it, and why she calls students in instead of catching them. This episode is based on her article "Driving medical education reform through intellectual honesty," published on KevinMD. You will hear why pass-fail courses inside graded curricula push students to put their energy elsewhere, why the hidden curriculum speaks louder than the syllabus, and what students disclosed...

Most patients on antidepressants are told they can't take methylene blue, even for brain fog. Steven E. Warren, a physician and longevity medicine clinician, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article "51 cases that reframe methylene blue serotonin syndrome." You'll hear why 50 of the 51 published serotonin-syndrome cases involved high-dose IV methylene blue given under anesthesia, mostly during parathyroid surgery, rather than the low oral doses used in outpatient longevity practice. Steven walks through the Goldilocks dosing posture he uses for patients with brain fog, why he screens every patient's full medication list for interactions before starting, and why he tells...

Up to 40 percent of infertility cases involve combined male and female factors, but the male partner is often skipped. Erica Bove, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist, returns to discuss why that gap exists and what can be done about it. This episode is based on her article "What is often overlooked about male factor infertility," published on KevinMD. You will hear how prescribed testosterone for low energy and low sex drive can wipe out sperm production, sometimes irreversibly, and why men taking it for low T frequently have no idea their fertility is at stake. You will learn...

Your ER doctor has about 25 minutes to figure out your medical history and decide what to do next. Hamed Husaini, an emergency physician and physician executive, explains why so much of that data never reaches the bedside and what AI can do about it. This episode is based on his article "AI in health care data management: Curing the EHR overload," published on KevinMD. You will hear why records from skilled nursing facilities, primary care, and home health rarely get read in time, why duplicate medications and missed end-of-life directives slip through, and how a one-page AI synopsis pushed...

The same instinct that makes you a careful clinician may be the one sabotaging your financial future. Cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner Stanley Liu joins this episode to explain why physicians' deeply trained aversion to risk becomes maladaptive once it leaves the hospital. This episode is based on his article "Physician financial risk: Balancing capacity and tolerance," published on KevinMD.

You will learn why risk capacity and risk tolerance are two different variables, and why mistaking one for the other quietly drives bad financial decisions. You will hear why the physicians most at financial risk are those...

What if the cure for physician burnout has been making it worse the whole time? Lisa Rubiano, an internal medicine physician and physician coach, spent over a decade as a hospitalist before burning out in 2021 and stepping back to figure out what really went wrong. This episode is based on her article "Why resilience is not the cure for physician burnout," published on KevinMD. You will hear why the resilience narrative quietly shifts blame onto individual physicians while letting toxic systems off the hook, how the Quadruple Aim turned clinician well-being into a vague self-care mandate, and what it...

Patients know when you are not really present with them, and trust is built or broken in the first few minutes. Jess Bunin, an intensivist, and George Mount, a rheumatologist, co-founders of All Levels Leadership, argue that trust in clinical teams is a practiced skill built from three concrete components: empathy, logic, and authenticity. This episode is based on their article "The secret sauce of leadership trust in health care teams," published on KevinMD. You will hear why a critical care fellow was required to say "I don't know" once on rounds even when he knew, what a three-time...

Most physicians using AI on patient data have no idea what the real security risks are. Francisco M. Torres, an interventional physiatrist, and Purab Patel, a medical student with a programming background, argue that cybersecurity has become a patient safety issue in medicine, and that the AI pipelines physicians now rely on are more complex than most clinicians realize. This episode is based on their article "Navigating the cybersecurity challenges of artificial intelligence in medicine," published on KevinMD. You will hear how changing a few pixels in a medical image can flip an AI diagnosis, why AI note-taking can...