Podcast
The Podcast by KevinMD
Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD · EN
Social media's leading physician voice, Kevin Pho, MD, shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. 15 minutes a day. 7 days a week. Welcome to The Podcast by KevinMD.
113episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Numbness after a mastectomy no one warns you about
Yesterday00:15:19Tap to summarizeMost women lose feeling in their chest after a mastectomy, and almost no one warns them ahead of time. Emily Hansen, a patient advocate who has spent nearly two decades in health care communication working with surgeons and breast cancer survivors, joins to explain a consequence of survivorship that stays largely hidden. You will learn why loss of sensation is nearly universal after mastectomy, why nerves are among the slowest tissues in the body to recover, and why patients so often feel guilty raising it with the surgeons who saved their lives. Hansen describes the real safety risks that follow, from burns to injuries patients never feel, along with the impact on intimacy that rarely gets discussed. This episode is based on her article "Living with numbness after mastectomy: the unseen impact on survivorship," published on KevinMD. You will come away with the specific questions every patient should ask before surgery and how the whole care team can raise this earlier. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →Why your treatment plan falls apart after you leave the doctor
2d ago00:14:46Tap to summarizeMost doctor visits do not fail in the room. They fail after you walk out, holding a plan and no clear idea of when something has gone wrong enough to call back. In this episode, retired surgeon and patient advocate Alan P. Feren explains why "call me if it gets worse" is not real guidance, and what clear instructions actually look like. He argues that sharing responsibility with patients only works when both sides share clarity, because a threshold no one defined is one no patient can act on. You will hear why patients delay care when they are unsure what counts as worse, why feasibility, whether a plan is actually doable for that person, matters as much as the plan itself, and the three things every clinician should name before a patient leaves. This episode is based on his article "Shared responsibility in patient care needs boundaries," published on KevinMD. Press play to hear how to turn a vague plan into one a patient can follow. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →How fear of the stock market quietly costs doctors a million dollars
5d ago00:23:23Tap to summarizeDoctors spend over a decade training and then quietly leave a fortune on the table when they handle their own money. In this episode, economics professor Hernan Moscoso Boedo explains why high income and years of schooling do not make physicians good investors. He compares the way doctors avoid the stock market to the way some people distrust vaccines, not because they understand the science, but because they do not trust the system protecting them. This episode is based on his article "Why your doctor invests like a vaccine skeptic," published on KevinMD. You will hear why physicians invest like people who earn half as much, why so many default to real estate, and how overconsumption, high advisory fees, and poor allocation can cost roughly 29 percent of retirement wealth. You will also hear his practical fix: open a brokerage account, start small, and let a simple diversified fund compound. Press play to hear why the money doctors lose is money they earned, and how little it takes to keep 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 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →Why physicians stay in jobs they could afford to leave
6d ago00:20:20Tap to summarizeMost physicians who feel stuck in a job could actually afford to leave. They just can't stomach what the worst week might look like. Stanley Liu, cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician career choices come down to risk tolerance." You will hear the gap between risk capacity (what your finances can actually absorb) and risk tolerance (what you can emotionally accept), why the two are not the same, and how the "first do no harm" reflex bleeds from clinical decisions into career decisions. He walks through the specific moves that make a worst-case scenario acceptable: a reserve fund, a debt payoff plan, proactive tax planning. He also explains why this conversation belongs in the family before it belongs on a resume, and how the spectrum of options is wider than physicians are trained to see. You will hear two failure modes to avoid: the rage-quit that lands in a worse job, and the five-year delay in a job you could have left long ago. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →When local doctors disappear, patients pay the price
1w ago00:16:33Tap to summarizeA patient with a dying leg won't drive 20 miles for care. In Devin Zarkowsky's town, that's not a hypothetical. Vascular surgeon Devin Zarkowsky runs a solo office-based practice in a San Diego County town where peripheral arterial disease patients had nowhere local to go, and Jason McKittrick is the executive director of the Office-Based Facility Association. They discuss the KevinMD article "Why local care matters for peripheral arterial disease." You will hear how the Medicare physician fee schedule pays hospitals for big-ticket equipment but pays solo doctors out of the same bundled rate they use to cover staff and wire and drapes, why a four-figure atherectomy or Shockwave catheter swallows a week of revenue when there is no separate reimbursement, and why Congress is finally looking at fixing it after years of small fixes that did not close the gap. You will hear what local care actually means when a patient cannot drive and the limb cannot wait. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →How immersive travel can reshape identity and habits
1w ago00:18:23Tap to summarizeA week off does not fix burnout. The same problems are waiting when you get home, and the same person is walking back into them. Stacey Funt is a radiologist who runs a boutique wellness adventure travel company, mostly for women in their 40s through 60s, including a high share of physicians. She discusses the KevinMD article "Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change." You will hear the science behind identity-driven behavior change: awe, novelty, supportive groups, meaningful challenge, and a clear before-and-after marker she calls a temporal landmark. She tells the story of a physician who had a benign brain tumor resected and rebuilt herself from post-operative patient to hiker at the front of the pack, and a burnt-out physician at a crossroads who used the trip to make a hard call about her career. You will hear what to do at home when a trip is not on the table: take an awe walk, set a temporal landmark, build a meaningful goal that requires real training. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →Why physician is not the same as provider
1w ago00:16:46Tap to summarizeCalling a doctor a provider sounds harmless. The American College of Physicians says it isn't. Janet Jokela, former treasurer of the American College of Physicians, professor, and medical educator, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style." She walks through how the word "provider" entered medicine through Medicare in 1965 and ended up lumping physicians together with hospitals and insurance companies as interchangeable "providers of services." You will hear why the Latin root of compassion (to suffer with) names something physicians do that corporate entities do not, why the ethical obligations physicians take on (do no harm, beneficence, patient autonomy, justice) do not apply to insurance companies or hospital systems in the same way, and why allowing the language to blur that line accelerates the deprofessionalization of medicine. You will hear what to say when someone calls you a provider, and what to call mixed clinical teams instead. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →Patient involvement and the future of clinical research
2w ago00:23:47Tap to summarizeMost clinical research treats patients like data points. What gets lost when researchers stop listening to the people they study, and what does it cost the science itself? Niharika Singh is a biomedical engineer and pre-medical student with research experience at Genentech, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and the Keck School of Medicine, and a global ambassador with the United Nations SURGhub. She discusses the KevinMD article "Patient involvement transforms modern clinical research." You will hear the difference between treating a patient as a data set, engaging them as a collaborator, and inviting their emotional and lived experience into the study design. She walks through the Tiger Project hernia training across India and Ghana, what medical device design verification taught her about surgical research, and why AI in medicine is making patient voice harder to hear. You will hear a research methodology that treats the patient's voice as data worth collecting, and a case for defending human connection as AI changes how medicine is practiced. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →How Medicare's new cut is closing private doctor practices
2w ago00:17:03Tap to summarizeA 30 to 40 percent Medicare cut just hit the doctors who keep your local hospital running, and the policy meant to stop hospital monopolies is accelerating them instead. John Birkmeyer, president of the medical group at Sound Physicians and a former Dartmouth health services researcher, discusses the KevinMD article "Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients." You'll hear how CMS quietly slashed the practice expense portion of Medicare payments for the first time in 20 years, hitting independent hospitalists, ER doctors, and critical care groups with net cuts of 6 to 10 percent. You'll learn why CMS aimed at hospital-owned practices but instead pulled the rug from under the independent groups already operating at 2 to 4 percent margins, why rural hospitals will struggle hardest to staff, and how the resulting consolidation drives up prices for every patient. You'll also hear what CMS could fix in its 2027 rule and why physician advocacy now is the only correction available before more independent practices fold. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
Transcribe →How true crime is radicalizing your kids online
2w ago00:16:51Tap to summarizeYour child is messaging neo-Nazis on Discord, role-playing the Columbine shooting on Roblox, or making fan art of mass killers, and you have no idea. That is the pattern Matthew Turner, an emergency medicine physician at Hershey Medical Center, is now seeing in his pediatric ER, where parents bring in children after spotting a chat-message leak that exposes months of online radicalization. He discusses the KevinMD article "The true crime community is radicalizing kids online." You'll hear how the true crime community pulls kids as young as eight from casual interest into obsession, imitation, and sometimes real-world violence, with one 14-year-old going on to commit a mass shooting. You'll learn which warning signs matter, why parental firewalls don't work, and the named resources clinicians and parents can use right now, including Parents for Peace, the Prevention Practitioners Network, and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. If you treat children or raise them, this conversation names a threat hiding inside platforms you already let them use. 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 RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
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