Bedside Rounds

74 - R2D2

What does it mean when a computer can make better medical decisions than a human? The progress in large language models, and in particular the popularity of ChatGPT, has

73 - Seadragon

What happens when a patient far from surgical care – say, at the bottom of the Pacific ocean on a submarine, or at a research base in Antarctica in the middle of the wint

72 - Problems

American doctors spend the majority of their time during the day on the computer, either writing or reading notes about their patients; only a small fraction is spent wit

71 - A Doctor's Work, part 2

In the past episode, cultural and medical historians Lakshmi Krishnan and Mike Neuss discussed the history of the actual work of the doctor – Holmesian detective, data en

70 - A Doctor's Work

What do doctors actually do? Are they Sherlockian detectives, hunting down obscure clues to solve intractable cases? Are they virtuosic experts, training for half a lifet

69 - The Database

How do doctors actually think? And if we can answer that, can we train a computer to do a better job? In the post-WW2 period, a group of iconoclastic physicians set about

68 - The History

Internal medicine physicians like to pride ourselves on our clinical reasoning – the ability to talk to any patient, pluck out seemingly random bits of information, and m

The Facemaker with Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris (#histmedconsultservice)

Modern plastic surgery was born out of the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. In this episode, Adam interviews historian Lindsey Fitzharris about her new book The

67 - Fever on the Frontier

In the early 19th century, a strange new illness, seemingly unknown to medicine, ravaged settler communities in the American Middle West. As fierce debates about this new

66 - Burnout

Burnout seems to stalk healthcare workers; between a third and a half of doctors and nurses had symptoms of burnout BEFORE the COVID-19 pandemic. Major medical associatio

65 - The Last Breath

How can we medically tell whether or not someone is alive or dead? The answer is much more complicated than you'd think. In this episode, which is a live podcast I gave w

64 - A Vicious Circle

During World War II, the US Army launched a seemingly routine experiment to find the ideal way to screen soldiers for tuberculosis. Jacob Yerushalmy, the statistician in

63 - Signals

What does it mean when different physicians disagree about a diagnosis? I am joined by Dr. Shani Herzig as we explore this issue in the second part of my series on the de

62 - The Sisters Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell -- the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States -- and her sister Emily Blackwell are some of the most important physicians of the 19

61 - Etymologies

Words matter. At its best, etymology gives us insight not only into the origins of words, but why they remain so important today, especially in medicine, where we've been

60 - Santa's Salmonella

For a special holiday treat, we're going to explore two tales of salmonella disease detectives -- the first about Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") and the birth of the genre;

59 - Cry of the Suffering Organs

Diagnosis is arguably the most important job of a physician. But what does it actually mean to make a diagnosis? In this episode, we'll explore this question by tracking

The House of Pod: How medical podcasting made me a better doctor and educator … and how it might change the future of medical education for everyone

In this episode, I talk about my podcasting journey -- how I started Bedside Rounds for inspiration during a low period in residency, how it changed me as a physician, an

58 - The Original (Antigenic) Sin

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the racial health disparities in the United States, with markedly increased mortality especially among Blacks and Native Americans. In thi

57 - The Second Wave

In August of 1918, a horrific second wave of the Spanish Flu crashed across the world. In this episode, the third of a four-part series exploring hydroxychloroquine and C