kevinmd

Health Policy

The first time I treated a newborn with the same congenital heart defect my unborn son was expected to have, I hesitated at the doorway. I couldn’t stop picturing my own baby intubated and sedated, a ...
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Stigmatizing language in medical records harms care

I have never asked medicine to promise me a cure. I have asked it to help me stay alive long enough to come home to my children. My medical record is not subtle. Recurrent pancreatitis led to sepsis ...
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Mental health: what psychiatrists and physicians say, in their own words

Read together, the 1,195 KevinMD posts on mental health, by psychiatrists, other doctors, and patients, say one thing consistently: the argument is no longer about whether mental illness is real but ...
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Medical ethics: what physicians say, in their own words

Read together, the 307 KevinMD posts on medical ethics say one thing consistently: the four principles are easy to recite and do not decide the hard cases. Physicians on the site describe informed ...
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Diabetes and obesity: what physicians say, in their own words

Read together, the 198 KevinMD posts on diabetes and obesity say one thing consistently: telling patients to eat less and move more did not work, and the doctors writing have spent fifteen years ...
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Aging and dementia: what physicians say, in their own words

Read together, the 544 KevinMD posts on aging and dementia, by geriatricians, other doctors, nurses, and families, say one thing consistently: the system that cares for older people was built for ...
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Children’s health: what pediatricians say, in their own words

Read together, the 741 KevinMD posts on children’s health say one thing consistently: the pediatricians and other doctors writing spend most of their time talking parents down from fear and the system ...
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Violence against health care workers: what physicians and nurses say, in their own words

Read together, the 59 KevinMD posts on violence against health care workers say one thing consistently: it is treated as part of the job, and the people it happens to say it is not. The record holds a ...
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Pediatric euthanasia and the fear of a new eugenics

Adapted from The New Eugenics in Medicine: Two Novellas About Power, Science, and the Future of Human Worth. The Netherlands’ first reported termination of life in a child between ages 1 and 12 under ...
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Why must fourth trimester care begin after delivery?

Throughout pregnancy, clinicians carefully monitor a woman’s health. Vitals are obtained, laboratory testing is performed, growth is monitored, and complications are identified. Then, a new life is ...
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Medicaid managed care and the case for mutual stewardship

Roughly half of American children receive their health care through Medicaid or CHIP. These programs were legislated to cover them, and the choice has been made (repeatedly, across decades and both ...
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Physicians and administrators: what physicians say about who runs medicine, in their own words

Read together, the 505 KevinMD posts about physicians and the people who manage them say one thing consistently: the argument is about who decides. Physicians on the site have been counting ...