Dr. Sheares talks about her experience with inequities. She believes that clinicians should aspire to be students of their patients as well as of the pathophysiology of the diseases their patients present with. Listen in. Running time: 20 minutes

In this, our second conversation on race and clinical equity, Dr. Karol Watson of UCLA offers her observations on what she’s observed as a cardiologist trying to deal with treatment plans for patients who’ve lost their health insurance or have had to go to a plan that doesn’t cover what’s needed. She reminds us that tagging […]

We’ve conducted a set of four interviews with physicians on the topic of race and clinical equity. The conversations center not so much on their published research, but on the roles that these physicians take in their organizations and, in addition, the stories they tell about their own experiences. Our first is with Dr. Kimberly Manning, who’s […]

Apologies for the long silence. We have been off doing other things — one of which has been figuring out how to cover conferences. Last month, after much preparation, we covered the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual conference; our second foray consists of brief coverage of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) gastrointestinal […]

Eric Rubin is editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. I asked him how COVID-19 has affected that journal, which has been around since the War of 1812 and seen its share of pandemics. Listen in — it’s the first in a planned series of interviews with the editors of the principal clinical journals. Running time: 19 minutes […]

[display_podcast} Dr. Paul Sax writes the closest thing that the NEJM Group has to humor. He’s serious, of course, since his blog “HIV and ID Observations” concerns all things infectious . But he sprinkles in the odd cartoon or links to … dog videos, fer cryin’ out loud. He scours the ID literature (and we must […]

Back in late March (people often tell me that, these days, 4 months ago might as well be 4 years ago) we talked with emergency physician Julian Flores, who was working out of Broward County. Covid-19 cases were modest in number but threatening to get worse, and indeed they did. The county’s cases jumped 100-fold, from […]

Don’t expect HIPAA regulations to protect your “digital health footprint” from prying eyes. Every time you swipe your card to buy goodies at the supermarket (are you risking diabetes with all that ice cream?), or binge-watch that kinky series (how’s your mental health these days, really?), or let your step-tracker show you’ve fallen off the pace […]

We interview Dr. Michael Gonzalez, a Houston-based emergency physician, who describes the situation there as “an ongoing, slow-rolling, level 6 hurricane that just isn’t gonna go away and, more importantly, isn’t gonna tell us when landfall is coming and when it’s gonna be over.” How are his patients reacting to this surge? What does he do […]

This time Dr. Ali Raja and Joe Elia talk with two authors of a study that found disparate effects on traffic deaths from the legalization of recreational cannabis. The two states under study, Colorado and Washington, were compared, not with each other, but with a composite of states that most closely resembled what Colorado and […]

The novel coronavirus obviously has devastating effects on the lungs, but other, less immediately visible attacks occur — notably to the kidneys. Dr. Steven Fishbane (a nephrologist) and his colleagues have just published their findings based on a survey of some 5500 patients with COVID-19 admitted to a metropolitan New York health system. Acute kidney injury […]

A combination of three antivirals — Kaletra (which is lopinavir plus ritonavir) and ribavirin — when given early and with interferon significantly reduces viral shedding, disease symptoms, and hospital stay in  patients with COVID-19 when compared with a control regimen of Kaletra alone. The drugs are active against other coronaviruses, but the key factors seem […]

We (Dr. Danielle Bowen Scheurer and Joe Elia) talk with Dr. John Jernigan of the CDC COVID-19 Investigation Team. They recently published their findings on the spread of COVID-19 in a Seattle-area skilled nursing facility. Most intriguingly, over half the patients who tested positive were asymptomatic at the time of their first testing, and a few […]

Cardiovascular consults are way down. Is the threat of COVID-19 infection scaring people away from EDs? We caught up with Dr. Comilla Sasson, the American Heart Association’s VP for science and innovation. She’s an emergency physician who teaches at the University of Colorado. She’d traveled to New York City to “help with the response,” and she […]

This week’s guests, Dr. Andre Sofair and Dr. William (“Rusty”) Chavey are physician-editors on the daily clinical news alert called Physician’s First Watch. I went back through the recent issues and found this January 10 entry, which began “The CDC is requesting that clinicians ask their patients with severe respiratory disease about any travel to Wuhan […]

Four weeks ago — in early March — I interviewed Dr. Renee Salas about climate change and clinical medicine. Back in those halcyon days, COVID-19 was very much a gathering storm, but it had not yet slammed into the United States. Here we are, over 10,000 U.S. deaths later in early April, not having heard of much […]

We talk with Colleen Farrell who’s doing her third year of an internal medicine residency in New York City. Fortunately, we caught her during a one-week vacation (she was supposed to be taking two), and she chatted with us about how she and her colleagues are coping. We asked her what she thought COVID-19’s larger lessons would […]

San Diego County has Dr. Kristi Koenig as medical director of its emergency medical services. That’s fortunate for the county, because she’s co-edited a definitive textbook, “Koenig and Schultz’s Disaster Medicine: Comprehensive principles and practices.” We’re fortunate to have her as our guest. She’s full of sound advice on organizing a community’s response (for example, setting […]

This time we talk with Dr. Julian Flores, who works in a Broward County, Florida, emergency room. When he was interviewed, the count of Covid-19 cases stood at 412, less than 12 hours later, the new number was 505, as of this posting — on Friday near noon Eastern — it’s at 614. Flores is expecting […]

Dr. Matt Young is a first-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology in suburban Delaware. Between the day I invited him to be interviewed and the interview itself (a 36-hour span) things had changed a lot for him. Anxiety levels are up among his colleagues, and everyone in his hospital must wear a mask all the time. […]

We talk with Susan Sadoughi, an internist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, about how quickly things have changed over the past week. Last week, I introduced the Fauci interview by saying that I’d heard a clinician complain that she’d spent half her time answering questions about COVID-19. This week, she’s our guest, and she’s […]

We have Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIAID to talk with us about COVID-19, the disease caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2). He’s full of sound advice in the midst of a rapidly changing epidemic. We wanted to know, How do you talk with patients about this rapidly spreading infection? How do you […]

Here we have an interview with Prof. Feng He, whose English is much better than my Mandarin. Thus, I’ve attached a transcript to make her ideas on salt intake (no level is too low) and blood pressure (there’s a dose-response relation with salt) more immediately available than it might be to your ears alone. She’s coauthor […]

JAMA recently published a review of some 40 papers examining the relation between malpractice liability strategies — tort reform, increased insurance premiums, etc. — and the quality of care. Apparently the efforts had no discernible effect on mortality rates, length of hospital stays, and the like. An editorial accompanying the paper sketches out a vision of […]

With human papillomavirus vaccine in short supply around, moving from a three- or two-dose regimen to one dose would immediately double or treble supplies, cut costs, and simplify logistics. A careful study in Cancer by this week’s guest, Ana Rodriguez, and her colleagues adds to the evidence that single-dosing is possible and protective against pre-cancerous cervical lesions. […]