The Podcast by KevinMD

Joining a private practice? Get the partnership terms in writing first.

Being offered partnership in a medical practice is usually good news, but not always. One physician paid $60,000 to buy in, then signed a contract making her cover all of

Self-care isn't self-indulgence, and burnout isn't only a personal problem

Doctors and nurses are trained to take excellent care of other people's health, and often don't look after their own. Close to half the health care workforce has burnout,

Why malpractice lawsuits are rarer but more expensive than ever

Doctors are sued far less often than they were 25 years ago, but the average malpractice payout has never been higher. Robert E. White, Jr., president of The Doctors Comp

Active sitting: Why ergonomic chairs and standing desks fail

The office chairs most of us sit in all day have little science behind them, and the popular fixes may not be much better. Turner Osler is a trauma surgeon and epidemiolo

Fired for seeing her own patients: moral injury and life after medicine

A physician was fired by the doctors she had trained, in part because she preferred to see her own patients herself. Moral injury, she argues, does not require 100-hour w

Disability claim denied? Your chart notes may be why.

The words you put in a patient's chart can be used to deny their disability claim. A note that says "stable" or "improved" can mean one thing to you and another to the in

Doctors lose hours to admin work that AI or an assistant could do

Many doctors who run their own practices spend hours on work someone else could do. One practice owner who charges $300 an hour was his own receptionist, verifying insura

Your living will could get you too much care, or too little

When you can't speak for yourself, a living will is supposed to speak for you. Too often, it doesn't. Seventy percent of U.S. adults don't have one, and those who do ofte

Memory loss is not normal aging, and waiting costs the treatment window

Someone tells you their memory is slipping. What you say next can decide whether treatment is still an option for them. Emer MacSweeney is a neuroradiologist and the cofo

A diagnosis no one authored can follow your patient from visit to visit

A patient arrives already sure of what is wrong with them. The words they use came from somewhere else. Alan P. Feren is a retired surgeon, health care consultant, and pa

Not all PTSD is the same, and the difference decides the treatment

Some people process a terrible event over a week or two and move on. Others replay it for years, and their bodies never settle back down. Faust Ruggiero is a clinical psy

Why the surgical backlog starts with how surgeons are trained

Surgical training still runs on the model it did decades ago. Everything around it has changed. Danny Goel walks you through what that mismatch costs. He is an orthopedic

Heart and brain got the investment; the musculoskeletal system did not

You can learn more from watching a patient walk down the hallway than from the rest of the exam. Most exams happen sitting or lying down. Narinder Singh Parhar is an inte

Burnout, difficult patients, and the question that changes both

Most patients called difficult have a reason nobody has asked about. Every chart carries labels, and the labels rarely carry the person. Stella Awua-Larbi is a nephrologi

AI, standing orders, and the 9 p.m. call medicine still cannot handle

A patient with a urinary tract infection calls at 9 p.m. and gets told to call back in the morning. Frustrated patients default to the emergency room instead. Tod Stillso

Patients on ventilators have things to say, and no way to say them

Only 4 in 10 caregivers say a doctor asked how the patient prefers to communicate. The patients who cannot answer often have the most to report. Chris Ross is a speech-la

How to be grateful when you are not a grateful person

Gratitude is easy to preach and hard to feel on a bad day. One physician spent a 40-year career learning to practice it on purpose. Scott Abramson is a neurologist and au

Stop calling it burnout: COVID denial and the wounds ER doctors carry

An emergency physician bought a new iPad and found 53 phone numbers he had forgotten were there. Each one was a family he put on a video call to say goodbye before he int

Doctors on social media should ask this question first

Your patients can see everything you post. Tali Lando was posting funny videos from her office while two of her young patients lay in the hospital struggling to recover,

Trusting the lab over the patient is the new medical error

The lab says the potassium is critically low. You walk in, and the patient looks completely fine. Duane Penshorn is an emergency physician and author. This episode is bas