The Podcast by KevinMD

Kevin Pho, MD

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.

  1. 12h ago

    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 Stillson is a family physician, health care entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of ChatRx. This episode is based on his article "Why medicine is late to asynchronous telehealth," published on KevinMD. You will hear why traditional telemedicine did not close this gap, because it is still appointment-based and still synchronous. You will hear how orchestrated AI agents and standing orders can tee up a low-acuity case so the decision itself takes seconds, why he calls that augmented clinical automation rather than autonomous AI, and what happens when he reviews a prescription the next morning and disagrees with it. You will also hear where he draws the line between this and the marketing funnels that route patients to doctors who rubber-stamp prescriptions. Press play for the case he makes for asynchronous care with a physician still in the loop, and the conditions he says never belong there. 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

  2. 1d ago

    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-language pathologist and school administrator. This episode is based on her article "Communication access is a patient safety issue," published on KevinMD. She spent 35 years giving nonverbal children a way to be understood, then woke from 12 days on ECMO with a tracheostomy and no way to say anything herself. You will hear what she tried when nobody on the unit knew sign language, what a respiratory therapist tore off a Kleenex box to give her, and why she still wonders whether a communication board would have eased her delirium. You will also hear about the chest tightness she could not report, what her hospital now hangs outside every room, and what she wants clinicians to ask a patient who communicates differently. Press play for what a patient on a ventilator is trying to tell you, and the free tool that lets them. 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

  3. 2d ago

    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 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. PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

  4. 3d ago

    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 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. PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

  5. 5d ago

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

  6. 6d ago

    Hospice waits on a court order when no family can speak for you

    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

  7. Oct 7

    Signs of depression families miss, and the stigma behind it

    Someone you love says they are fine. They still eat, they still go to work, and no one asks a second time. Nneka Oluoha is an internal medicine physician and the author of a novel about a Nigerian immigrant living with depression. This episode is based on her article "The signs of depression a husband almost missed," published on KevinMD. She explains why depression is an illness the entire family carries, and why the people around someone are left with challenges of their own. You will hear why she believes therapy belongs to men and to children, and where the pressure to look strong begins. She found the same stigma in the United States that she grew up around in Nigeria. Her answer is not complicated: more honest conversations, and a willingness to sit and listen when someone cannot say what is wrong. If someone close to you keeps insisting nothing is wrong, this conversation will change what you listen for. 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

4.8
out of 5
274 Ratings

About

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.

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