How I Doctor with Dr. Graham Walker

Physicians are making more correcting medical misinformation online than delivering babies.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Fran Haydanek, better known to millions as Paging Dr. Fran, for an unfiltered conversation about medicine in the algorithm era.

Fran is a board-certified OB-GYN, residency faculty member, hospital medical director and a physician creator with more than one million followers across TikTok and Instagram. What began as a simple video correcting breastfeeding misinformation during maternity leave has evolved into a full-scale media operation. One that now generates...

Yann LeCun is one of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence. Alex LeBrun is the founder of Nabla and newly announced CEO of AMI Labs, a new AI research company he and Yann are building around a bold idea: large language models aren’t enough for medicine.

In this special episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down in-person with Alex and Yann to explore the next frontier of AI in healthcare - world models. While today’s AI systems excel at predicting the next word, Yann argues that real clinical intelligence requires something deep...

Primary care sits at the center of medicine and yet no one seems willing to truly own it.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Lisa Rosenbaum, cardiologist and national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine, for a wide-ranging conversation about why primary care remains both indispensable and persistently undervalued.

🎧 Before you go any further: If this conversation resonates, make sure you also listen to Lisa’s excellent NEJM podcast, Not Otherwise Specified. It’s one of the most honest, intellectually rigorous explorations of modern medicin...

AI has arrived in medicine faster than anyone expected, but speed doesn’t guarantee wisdom.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at UCSF and one of healthcare’s most trusted voices on technology, to unpack what physicians are getting wrong about AI.

Drawing from his new book A Giant Leap, Bob offers a rare, grounded perspective: neither hype nor fear, but informed optimism. Graham and Bob explore de-skilling, trust, medical education, workflow realities, regulation, and the very human question of what happens when...

Medicine is full of people doing the right thing inside systems that reward the wrong work.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Shikha Jain, a hematologist-oncologist, professor, and founder of Women in Medicine, to discuss why some of the most essential work in medicine happens after hours, off the clock, and without recognition - especially for women physicians.

Shikha makes a clear case for why physician distress isn’t a resilience problem, a time-management issue, or a pipeline failure. It’s a systems problem. From RVU...

Tim Peck has spent his career practicing medicine where the system is most fragile. A Harvard-trained emergency physician, healthcare entrepreneur, and frontline clinician in rural America, Tim has worked inside nursing homes, healthcare deserts, and communities shaped by the opioid crisis—places where delays, payment failures, and policy decisions have immediate consequences.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Tim to explore what emergency medicine teaches about leadership, systems failure, and responsibility beyond the bedside. Tim shares why ER doctors are uniquely trained to lead in chaos, how seeing pa...

Eve Cunningham has spent her career navigating the hard edges of modern medicine from delivering babies and performing gynecologic surgery to leading large health system initiatives and now serving as Chief Medical Officer at Cadence. Along the way, she’s seen firsthand why chronic disease care continues to fail patients despite more data, more technology, and more dashboards than ever before.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Graham Walker sits down with Eve to unpack why clinic-based, episodic care is fundamentally mismatched to conditions like heart failure, diabetes, and hypertension. She explains why early efforts at re...

David Rhew has spent his career at the intersection of frontline medicine and cutting-edge technology. An infectious disease physician by training and now Global Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft, David brings a rare perspective shaped by decades of clinical work, health system leadership, and early research on AI in healthcare.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Graham Walker sits down with David to unpack where AI in medicine is actually headed and why so many clinicians feel frustrated despite using these tools every day. David explains why physicians aren’t afraid of AI itself, but of po...

Merry Christmas! Today we are re-releasing one of our favorite episode of the year. We'll be back next week with a brand new interview to kickoff 2026.

Mark Cuban is a business mogul, the “Shark” every entrepreneur wants to make a deal with, the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and, most recently, an online pharmacy CEO. In 2022, Mark co-founded Cost Plus Drugs with the goal of lowering prescription drug prices. The direct-to-consumer company makes generic drugs affordable by cutting pharmacy benefit managers out of the distribution chain. But, once Mark starts talking about tackling the pharmaceutical market, you...

Dr. Eric Topol is one of the most influential voices in modern medicine. Founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and author of Deep Medicine and Super Agers, Eric has spent decades interrogating medical dogma, calling out hype, and pushing the profession toward evidence, prevention, and humanity.

Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Eric for a candid conversation about why physicians shouldn’t fear AI and why when used correctly, it may be one of the most powerful tools we’ve ever had to reduce errors, restore trust, and shift medicine from late-stage treatment to true prevention. 

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AI is already shaping how physicians practice. And for the release of The 2025 Physicians AI Report, Graham is taking a different kind of episode: a deep-dive mailbag where he answers the questions doctors are actually asking about AI, grounded in one of the largest physician surveys of its kind.

More than 1,000 physicians were polled in this project, and their answers paint a far more nuanced picture than the headlines suggest. 

📊 Yes, two-thirds of physicians already use AI every day. 

✅ Yes, the majority believe AI can meaningfully reduce administrative burden. 

⚠️ And yes, 81% are frustrat...

Independent primary care isn’t a relic of the past — it’s becoming the future of American medicine.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with two leaders helping drive that shift: Dr. Umar Bowers, an internist who left a major health system to build the practice he always envisioned, and Dan Bowles, General Manager of Practice Health at Aledade , the physician-led company enabling thousands of doctors to stay independent, financially stable, and clinically autonomous.

Umar shares his personal journey from rising frustration inside a large employed medical group to opening Dawson...

This Thanksgiving, we’re pressing pause on the chaos of clinical life to honor the physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers who keep showing up tired, hopeful, frustrated,and inspired. 

In this special “Best Of” episode, Dr. Graham Walker revisits five conversations that have sparked the most messages, DMs, forwarded links, and late-night reflection from our listeners. These clips come from leaders who’ve helped all of us re-examine the work, the system, and ourselves:

Featured Episodes & Links

Dr. Shiv Rao is a cardiologist, entrepreneur, and the CEO and co-founder of Abridge, the physician-founded AI compan...

Dr. Kalie Dove-Maguire is an emergency physician, health-tech leader, and the President and Chief Product Officer at Evidently — a physician-founded company building clinical decision support tools designed to earn trust, not replace judgment. After years on the frontlines, Kalie saw firsthand how critical information gets lost in the noise, how clinicians compensate for broken workflows, and how better tools could prevent avoidable harm. That realization ultimately pushed her from the ER to the product world, where she now designs AI systems that surface the right data, cite their sources, and respect the mental work only clinicians can do.

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Dr. Shiv Rao is a cardiologist, entrepreneur, and the CEO and co-founder of Abridge, the physician-founded AI company transforming how clinical conversations become care. Built on the belief that healthcare is about people, not paperwork, Abridge is now embedded in more than 200 major health systems, processing millions of encounters each week and helping doctors reconnect with the meaning of their work.

In this special in-person episode, How I Doctor host Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Shiv for an unfiltered, wide-ranging conversation about the rise of AI in medicine, the moral crisis facing clinicians, and what it...

Dr. Jackie Gerhart is a family physician, clinical informaticist, and Chief Medical Officer at Epic — the company whose software powers much of American healthcare. From ambient documentation and AI scribes to patient-facing AI assistants like Emmy, Epic is now redefining how data, technology, and the human touch coexist in clinical care. 

Few physicians have seen this evolution from the inside and even fewer have helped shape it.

In this episode of How I Doctor, host Dr. Graham Walker talks with Jackie about Epic’s internal culture, its push to make the EHR invisible, and the compa...

We're releasing a Physicians AI Whitepaper and need your help!

Calling all MDs: Help us shape the future of what AI looks like in medicine. Participate Here!

Dr. Sean Codier is an emergency physician at Salem Hospital within Mass General Brigham and one of the leaders behind the first successful physician unionization effort in the system’s history. What started as frustration over understaffing, overcrowding, and a lack of voice in patient-care decisions grew into a movement that’s now inspiring doctors nationwide to organize for change.

In this episode of How I Doct...

Dr. Vineet Arora is the Dean for Medical Education at the University of Chicago and one of the nation’s leading voices on equity, leadership, and physician well-being. Her groundbreaking research has exposed how gender bias and pay inequity continue to shape medicine—from how residents are evaluated to how faculty are promoted and paid. But more importantly, she’s focused on what can be done about it.

On this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Dr. Arora about why women physicians still earn less than their male peers—and the systemic, cultural, and pers...

Dr. Ali Chaudhary is an emergency physician, entrepreneur, and one of the leading voices helping doctors reclaim control over their careers. After leaving a traditional W-2 job, he built Locums United and LocumOS - two platforms designed to bring transparency, fairness, and autonomy to how physicians are staffed and compensated. Having lived both sides of medicine, Ali shares how locum tenens work can transform burnout into balance and turn short-term contracts into long-term career freedom.

On this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Ali about what really happens when doctors leave the W-2...

Dr. Alison Haddock is an emergency physician, educator, and past president of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). She’s spent her career fighting for physician autonomy and building a sustainable future for emergency medicine. One where doctors aren’t just surviving shift to shift, but leading the systems that shape their work. A national voice on policy and workforce reform, Dr. Haddock has seen firsthand how crowding, violence, and financial pressure are pushing ER physicians to their breaking point and what it will take to bring them back.

On this episode of How I Doctor, Dr...

Dr. Brian Dixon is a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and one of the boldest physician voices pushing for salary transparency and fairness in medicine. He’s the founder of Simply Psych and Mindful, and he’s built his career by pulling back the curtain on contracts, compensation, and the hidden math of how health systems profit off physicians. With radical honesty, he shares not just his wins but also his mistakes—showing doctors the real trade-offs between employment, private practice, and entrepreneurship.

On this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Brian about why most contracts are de...

This episode is sponsored by Abridge - the leading AI platform that drafts structured, clinically useful notes at the point of conversation.

MDCalc turns 20 this year. What began as a scrappy side project in med school grew - without outside funding - into one of the most-used, most-trusted clinical references in the world. In this episode of How I Doctor, host Dr. Graham Walker sits down with his co-founder Dr. Joe Habboushe - an emergency physician, math nerd in the best sense, and relentless advocate for evidence-based care - to unpack how MDCalc was built, why clinicians...

Ethan Nkana spent over a decade as a hospital executive negotiating contracts on behalf of health systems. He knew the inside playbook: how administrators calculated physician value, what mantras they used behind closed doors, and the quiet ways hospitals exploited physician professionalism. Then he switched sides. 

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Ethan to explore medicine’s hidden business realities. From the stigma of being called “greedy,” to why the squeaky wheel gets the raise, Ethan unpacks how contracts are really written and how doctors can speak up without jeopardizing their c...

Dr. Danielle Ofri is an internist at Bellevue Hospital, clinical professor at NYU, and one of the most widely read physician-writers of our time. Through her books, essays, and New York Times op-eds, she has given voice to the emotional realities of medical work and exposed the ways the business of healthcare exploits the professionalism of doctors and nurses. Her clarity and candor have made her a trusted guide for physicians who feel the weight of a system that too often prioritizes profit over patient care.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits...

Dr. Hillary Lin is a Stanford-trained internist and longevity entrepreneur who is cutting through the hype to bring evidence-based clarity to one of medicine’s buzziest frontiers. As co-founder and CEO of Carecore and host of The Longevity Show, she’s built her career at the intersection of clinical skepticism and innovation, challenging what’s real and what physicians need to know about this fast-growing space.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Hillary to unpack the science of longevity medicine. From the pillars that actually work to the overhyped products floodi...

Dr. Gita Pensa is an emergency physician and nationally recognized advocate who knows firsthand the toll malpractice takes on doctors. After enduring a 12-year legal battle that included two jury trials, she emerged determined to break the silence around litigation and its hidden impact on physicians’ identity, mental health, and careers. Today, she uses her story to teach colleagues how to survive what she calls medicine’s “second trauma.”

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Gita about the day she was served, the years she spent fighting in court, and how that exp...

Dr. Paulius Mui is a family physician, technologist, and community builder who refuses to fit into a single box. Instead of choosing between clinic shifts and tech projects, he’s built a portfolio career that blends patient care, experimentation, and creativity. Most recently, Paulius is reimagining what primary care looks like by launching a direct primary care practice that lets patients pay what they can.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Paulius about why full-time primary care has become nearly impossible and why he has decided to choose mission over money fo...

Dr. Annie Andrews is a pediatric hospitalist, public health advocate, and U.S. Senate candidate in South Carolina taking on incumbent Lindsey Graham. Known for her unapologetic advocacy for children’s health, Annie has spent over 15 years caring for sick and injured kids, only to realize that many of their challenges stemmed from broken policies far upstream of the hospital. From gun violence prevention to protecting Medicaid, she’s made it her mission to bring a physician’s voice into the rooms where decisions are made and to speak with a candor rarely heard in politics.

In this e...

Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider is an internal medicine physician, a public health advocate, and one of the most trusted voices translating science for the real world. Whether she’s hosting th TED Health podcast, advising Netflix on end-of-life storytelling, or calling out hype and misinformation in the media, her work is reshaping how clinicians show up at the bedside and in the public square.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Shoshana about the skill every physician needs but few are taught: communication. They explore how bias shows up in clinical encounters, why do...

Dr. Josh Green is an emergency physician who’s done what many doctors only talk about. He’s taken a seat at the table and turned it into a platform for real change. After two decades practicing rural medicine in Hawaii and witnessing firsthand the systemic failures that lead to poor outcomes, he ran for office in his scrubs - and won. Today, as Governor of Hawaii, he’s applying the triage mindset of emergency medicine to some of the most complex public health and policy problems of our time, from homelessness and housing to climate change, Medicaid reform, and AI...

Rebecca Mitchell is a physician, product strategist, and founding partner at Scrub Capital - a new kind of venture fund built from first principles to fix what’s broken in health tech investing. Alongside her co-founders, Rebecca is working to make sure that healthcare startups aren’t just built for clinicians, they’re built with them.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Rebecca about why it’s time to give clinicians more power. Not just at the bedside, but on the cap table. They dive into how Scrub Capital is supporting over 800...

Attorney Dennis Hursh has reviewed more than 3,500 physician contracts and has seen the same patterns again and again - doctors being underpaid, overworked, and legally trapped by language they didn’t know to question. 

In this episode, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Dennis about how RVUs and non-competes are often used against physicians, and how to push back. They dive into the structural imbalance between hospitals and physicians, the myths of “standard contracts,” and the silent clauses that could cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

From shocking stories of RVU misreporting to seven-figure locums arbitra...

Dr. Jay Parkinson is a pediatrician and founder who’s been reinventing healthcare from the outside in for nearly two decades. From launching one of the first tech-enabled house call services in Brooklyn to pioneering virtual primary care with Sherpaa, Jay has always believed that doctors can design better systems. Now he’s back with Automate Clinic, a new venture training physicians to fine-tune clinical AI models with real-world judgment and insight.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Jay about bucking the traditional medical career path, designing more human-centered systems, and what...

Dr. Ami DeWaters is a hospitalist, medical educator, and one of the leading voices reimagining how we prepare residents for the realities of modern medicine. She’s an associate professor at Penn State College of Medicine that’s known for her sharp insights and deep commitment to building physicians who are not just clinically excellent, but also financially, professionally, and systemically fluent.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Ami about the disconnect between what doctors are taught and what they actually need to succeed. From FTEs and RVUs to PSLF and prio...

Dr. Greg Murphy is a practicing urologist and four-term Republican Congressman representing North Carolina’s third district—and the only physician in Congress who still actively sees patients, entirely pro bono. Before entering politics, he served as an affiliate professor, urology group president, and chief of staff at a Level 1 trauma center in Greenville, NC. These days, he’s sounding the alarm about what he sees as a crisis in the medical profession: a generation of young doctors who, in his view, are losing their sense of calling.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker...

Dr. Paul Tran is a pediatric gastroenterologist, award-winning medical educator, and the creator behind Alimentary School — an online platform using storytelling, mentorship, and dad jokes to make medicine more human. He’s on a mission to break down outdated hierarchies and rebuild medical education around trust, real-time feedback, and genuine connection.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Paul about what’s broken in medical training and how we can actually fix it. With warmth and wit, Paul explains why seeing students as “just students” undermines patient care, how virtual interviews and pass/fail...

The world of medicine is entering a new era. One where AI isn’t just a buzzword, but a daily presence in the lives of physicians. That’s why Offcall recently hosted a live webinar We're Sharing AI Secrets for Clinicians, featuring Dr. Graham Walker, ER physician and co-founder of Offcall, and Dr. Sarah Gebauer, anesthesiologist and founder of Valara Health. Longtime friends and Stanford med classmates.

Their goal? Demystify AI for busy clinicians and provide practical tools to navigate this moment of transformation. Not in five years, but right now. Throughout the session, Graham and Sarah unpa...

Shawna Butler is a nurse, economist, and creator of the EntrepreNURSE movement — but above all, she’s a force for rethinking how healthcare systems are built and who gets a say.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Shawna about what we lose when we treat nurses like costs instead of collaborators. They unpack the deep roots of burnout and moral injury, explore why innovation often fails without frontline input, and ask a radical but overdue question: what if nurse wellbeing were a quality metric?

It’s a bold conversation about...

Aniq Rahman is a two-time tech founder, but when he turned his attention to healthcare he did something most disruptors don’t - he shut up and listened. Aniq embedded himself in hospitals, shadowed physicians, and absorbed the daily frustrations that don’t show up in EMR logs or admin dashboards.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Aniq about what he learned by watching before building, and how that humility shaped his approach to transforming healthcare with Fabric. They dig into what’s broken in the current system, why software often makes...

Dr. Kaveh Hoda is a practicing gastroenterologist and longtime podcaster. He’s part of a cohort of doctors who trained on paper charts, watched the rise of EHRs, and now find themselves navigating mid-career questions that older generations rarely asked. Questions about purpose, burnout, and identity beyond the white coat.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker talks with Kaveh about what it means to hit your clinical stride and still feel a pull toward something more. They unpack the hidden costs of professionalism, the subtle slide from skepticism into cynicism, and the permission ev...