The Podcast by KevinMD with host Kevin Pho, MD

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 author. This episode is based on his article "A physician's three lessons on gratitude in medicine," published on KevinMD. You will hear the patient in a wheelchair who pointed out that his shoes never wear out, the colleague who still savors every sip of a Coca-Cola because he got one cup a year as a boy in Ghana, and what Paul McCartney's approach to singing Yesterday has to do with explaining the same diagnosis for the thousandth time. You will also hear the tool he calls the positive power of negative thinking, the index card he kept on his office computer, and the sentence his parents' generation repeated about shoes and feet. Press play for three stories that make gratitude feel less like advice and more like something you can practice on your next bad day.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story.

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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 intubated their loved one. Howie Mell is an emergency physician with a master's degree in public health. This episode is based on his article "COVID trauma in emergency physicians can surface suddenly," published on KevinMD. You will hear why he says he never wanted to be thanked for the work but did not expect to be attacked over it. He explains why he wants the word burnout retired, what he believes physicians are actually carrying, and why he never expected anyone else to say me too. He also describes what happened when he published the piece and his inbox filled with colleagues telling him their own version. He closes with the three things he tells physicians who have been carrying this in silence, starting with what to call it.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story.

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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, and it left her torn. She is a pediatric otolaryngologist and airway surgeon. This episode is based on her article "The question doctors on social media should ask first," published on KevinMD. You will hear why she once had to stop posting, what two longtime parents said when she finally asked them directly, and why she calls their answer a selected group rather than a verdict. She explains how a silly video lowers a scared child's fear before an office procedure, how posting pulls her back from burnout, and the three things she tells physicians never to do online. Press play for the question she still has not answered and the limits she sets while she works on it.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story.

PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer

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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 based on his article "Automation bias is the new medical error," published on KevinMD. He explains that automation bias got its name from studies of airline pilots, who had seen an alert be correct so many times that they stopped checking whether this one was. You will hear why point-of-care machines never answer "I don't know," and why most errors trace to how the sample was handled rather than to the machine. One clumped platelet count sent a child to the hospital for nothing. He is direct about the fix. If the number does not fit the patient in front of you, order it again, and say so out loud to the radiologist when the scan does not fit either. If you have ever scanned a result for the red flags and moved on, this conversation will make you look twice.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story.

PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer

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A man is dying. He cannot speak, and no one in his life can say what he would have wanted. Kirsten Engel is a palliative medicine physician, and Medha Tripathi is a health writer and incoming Fulbright research scholar. This episode is based on their article "Guardianship and hospice care fail dying patients," published on KevinMD. They explain what happens when a patient has no family and no health care proxy, and a court appoints a guardian who has never met them. A move to comfort measures then needs a court date that can take weeks, while the hospital works in hours and days. Estimates range from 5 to 25 percent of intensive care patients with no family member or proxy. You will hear what helps now: your state's rules, hospital social workers and ethics committees trained for them, and a proxy named long before anyone needs one. If you have never named one, this conversation explains who decides in your place, and what has to change so the decision comes in time.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story.

PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast