The term "excited delirium" has been used for years by law enforcement and other first responders, including health care workers, to describe people who exhibit behavior that is considered "out of control." This diagnosis has been applied again and again, even posthumously, as a justification for extreme and sometimes deadly, interventions by law enforcement. It came up most recently in the trials of two police officers accused of causing the death of Elijah McClain, a Colorado man; both officer...
Nov 08, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever taken phenylephrine for a stuffed-up nose and then felt better? If so, you might have been perplexed when Food and Drug Administration experts recently said that that the drug — which is in some versions of DayQuil, Sudafed, and other medicines — is no more effective than a placebo. But to Michael H. Bernstein, an assistant professor of diagnostic imaging at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, it all makes sense. On this episode, Bernstein discusses the placebo ef...
Nov 01, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast In just two weeks, the brutality of the Israel-Hamas conflict has shocked the world. But one of its most heartbreaking aspects — the destruction of the already-struggling health care system in Gaza — is part of a decades-long pattern during war both in the region and around the world. Leonard Rubenstein is a distinguished professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and author of “Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care From the Violence of War.” On...
Oct 25, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast After physically debilitating cancer treatment, Laurie Brunner encountered another medical hurdle: She had developed lymphedema that required surgery, but her BMI was over the cutoff. To receive the necessary treatment, she would have to lose weight. I spoke with Laurie and her physician Jody Dushay about how the ongoing shortages of GLP-1 medications are creating logistical and medical problems. Our conversation was based on Jody’s recent First Opinion essay, “How the Wegovy shortage is making ...
Oct 11, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're popping into your feed on a Sunday because we wanted to share an episode of The Nocturnists: Post-Roe America. You may have already heard the First Opinion Podcast interview with Ali Block, an abortion provider and executive producer of The Nocturnists, and Nikki Zite, an OB/GYN in Tennessee. (If you haven't listened yet, please do!) On this episode of The Nocturnists, you'll hear more from Nikki, Ali, and other doctors trying to navigate reproductive health landscape after the end of Roe....
Oct 08, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Physicians Alison Block and Nikki Zite knew what they were getting into when they became abortion providers early in their medical training. Family planning has long been a politicized, divisive area of medicine. And even though they knew that Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court case that protected abortion access across the country — was being threatened, it still hit them hard when that ruling was actually overturned in June 2022.
Oct 04, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast From our colleagues at Globe Opinion comes a new podcast: Say More. Say More, hosted by Globe columnist Shirley Leung, is all about exploring our backyard for the cultural trends, scientific discoveries, and breakthrough startups that are shaping the nation.
Aug 02, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephanie W. Edmonds and Ginny L. Ryan are both doctors. Edmonds, a registered nurse, has a Ph.D., while Ryan is a traditional M.D. But as part of a fight over “scope creep” in health care, many medical doctors might bristle at the idea of calling Edmonds “doctor.” In the last episode of the season, Edmonds and Ryan speak about the health care hierarchy, why calling health care workers by their first names might help patients, the tendency for physicians to mock "noctors," and much more.
Jul 26, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast "You can't pour from an empty cup" is what registered nurse Tara Rynders learned the hard way after two decades of work and one heartbreaking, life-threatening experience of being a critical care patient herself. Before that experience, she'd always found found that dance, play, and other types of movement helped her express and heal from the trauma she encountered and held in her body every day. After recovering from her experience as a patient, she brought that to several other nurses in a wor...
Jul 19, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a devastating disease and, until very recently, was one without much hope. When Hawken Miller was diagnosed at age 5, the physician told his parents to enjoy the time they had with him, as there wouldn't be much. Over 20 years later, Miller is a journalist and content strategist for CureDuchenne, an organization started by his mother when he was diagnosed, and new treatment is on the horizon. Last month, the FDA approved a new gene therapy from Sarepta Therapeutics...
Jul 12, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Physician and professor Jason Karlawish argues that new promising drugs like lecanemab, an anti-amyloid antibody expected to be approved by the FDA July 6, will introduce complicated issues into the field of Alzheimer's care. These medications require a great deal of testing and patient monitoring, trained physicians, and other resources in a system that is already stretched thin.
Jul 05, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Drug shortages are a growing problem in the U.S., and a shortage of live-saving cancer drugs has reached crisis levels. Oncologist Kristen Rice explains that drug shortages have been happening for several years but have been getting progressively worse in the last few months. Oncologists are facing critical shortages of common, generic cancer medications and have even begun to ration care for certain patients who are able to delay treatment, according to Rice.
Jun 28, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurers are required to cover all costs associated with preventive care — including PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylactic treatment for HIV. But now all preventive care coverage is under threat, thanks to a lawsuit filed by employers who believe they shouldn’t be required to pay for care that violates their religious beliefs. While coverage for PrEP access largely unchanged as the court case makes its way through the legal system, Richard Hughes IV, a partner ...
Jun 21, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Just days after the end of Roe v. Wade, Caitlin Bernard, an OB/GYN in Indiana, told the Indianapolis Star a heartbreaking story: She had recently been asked to perform an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped. In late May, the Indiana Medical Licensing Board held a hearing on Bernard. While they did not revoke her license, they fined Bernard $3,000 and issued a letter of reprimand, saying that by speaking out, she had violated the 10-year-old girl’s privacy. This week, Gabriel B...
Jun 14, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast When a loved one is living with serious substance use disorder and refuses to get help, sometimes it seems like the only solution is to force them into it. In many states, people can be “arrescued” — that is, forced under penalty of law into a treatment program that is nearly identical to being incarcerated, down to orange jumpsuits. But Sarah Wakeman, an addiction medicine physician, says that while she understands the love that makes people see involuntary treatment as a solution, it doesn’t a...
Jun 07, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast The high cost of cancer treatment in the U.S. is literally killing people. “Over a quarter of cancer patients delay medical care, go without care, or make changes in their cancer treatment because of cost,” Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and co-director of the Health Care Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent First Opinion essay. But Emanuel says there’s a solution: Cancer patients shouldn’t have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for their treatment, espec...
May 30, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast We've all had the experience of a clinician staring at screen while asking us sensitive questions to fill out our electronic health records. But that frustrating experience is made even worse by a new trend in health care. As Sanjay Basu wrote in a recent First Opinion, hospitals are using so-called "screen and refer" systems to identify people with social needs, like those who are experiencing domestic violence or hunger. The idea is that workers ask patients about their needs, then refer them ...
May 24, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast As an oncologist, Jennifer Lycette gets to know her patients particularly well. She’s doubtful that artificial intelligence could replace that personal connection, but new research based on, of all things, Reddit Q&As, says otherwise. New study findings raised questions about the potential for using chatbots, like ChatGPT, to help physicians answer questions submitted from patients through electronic medical records — a task that can take hours of stolen, rushed time between appointments at the ...
May 17, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Rosenblat is particularly careful when it comes to her digital privacy. She requests to fill out paper forms instead of digital ones; she documents and tracks what she signs. But even her diligence can't always save her. Rosenblat recently spent months retracing her digital steps after Phreesia, a company that collects demographic information, claimed to have her authorization to share her data — authorization she knew she hadn't consented to. This week, Rosenblat talks to host and editor T...
May 10, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In training to become a physician, medical residency can be a grueling period. Now, medical residents across the country have begun fighting to unionize their ranks. In Boston, residents at Massachusetts General Brigham — a major medical system — recently garnered enough votes to file for a union election. In her first episode as host of the "First Opinion Podcast," editor Torie Bosch speaks to two MGB residents, Minali Nigam and David Bernstein, with differing opinions on the best next step for...
May 03, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast After two years as host of the First Opinion Podcast and many more as the founding editor of STAT's expansive, authoritative First Opinion platform, Pat Skerrett put down his editing pen and microphone to start a new chapter: retirement. But before he left, he sat down with Torie Bosch, who has just joined STAT as our new First Opinion editor. They chatted about hopes for the section, editorial pet peeves, and the vampire bats of Costa Rica.
Mar 15, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Ken Duckworth was a child, his family didn't talk about mental health, especially not his father's bipolar disorder. It was an untouchable topic, but Duckworth knew his father shouldn't be seen as a lost cause. Instead, his father and others like him might actually have critical expertise on how to navigate the world with mental illness — expertise they gained not through books and studying but through lived experience.
Nov 23, 2022•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a special event as part of STAT's Open Doors initiative, the "First Opinion Podcast" was recorded live this week in front of an audience with returning guest Jay Baruch. Not long after being a guest on the first episode of the "First Opinion Podcast" in February 2021 on the many stories he's written for STAT in his time working as an emergency room physician, Baruch penned a letter to his boss spelling out his intention to leave medicine behind. But the simple act of writing the letter transf...
Nov 16, 2022•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The idea that the narrowing gap between Covid-19 deaths among white Americans and Americans of color represents a racial equity success story is being bandied about. Not so fast, says Nathan T. Chomilo, a pediatrician and internist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. This conversation emerged from the First Opinion essay "Covid-19 is an inverse equity story, not a racial equity success story" that was written by Marina Del Rio, Chomilo, and Neil A. Lewis, Jr.
Nov 09, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast As states begin to receive money from the multitude of lawsuits and settlements the opioid makers and distributors have agreed to pay, the number of overdose deaths in the country continue to increase, reaching an all-time high in 2021. Researcher Linda Richter worries that not enough of the settlement funds, upward of $22 billion, are going toward early-stage prevention measures.
Nov 02, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Terry Wilcox's grandmother lived in an isolated house at the top of a hill overlooking the magical mountains and valleys of the Ozarks until, as she tells it, "the day we literally had to drag her off of it." Home health care services have helped keep Wilcox's family healthy and safe — and reduce her stress — but they aren't equally accessible to everybody. Wilcox, a co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Patients Rising, discusses how that uneven ground is now being further threaten...
Oct 26, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast After years of deliberation, the FDA recently announced a new set of rules it proposes to regulate claims on food packaging that a product is "healthy." The most basic rule: the product must actually contain food, not just ingredients. This may seem intuitive, but as professor and nutrition policy expert Marion Nestle points out, the food industry works hard to sell their products. This week, Nestle explains the purported intentions behind the confusing food labels, and how it all got so complic...
Oct 19, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast It took the U.S. Supreme Court just seven days last June to set back public health by 50 years. Several cases before the court this term could continue that assault. This week, law professor Lawrence O. Gostin explores how these cases — some of which are not explicitly about public health — might worsen the myriad health inequalities that became so evident throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Oct 12, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Modern wheelchairs with standing technology have amazing capabilities that can be game-changing for wheelchair users looking to take care of themselves independently whenever they can. This week, two wheelchair users, Paul Amadeus Lane and Jim Meade, talk about how shortsighted it is that Medicare — the primary health insurer for older adults as well as for many people with spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, ALS, and other long-term disabilities — doesn’t cover the cost of wheelchairs equ...
Oct 05, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade opened the door to allow states to ban or severely restrict abortion. But as biotech CEO Aoife Brennan and her colleagues are coming to realize, it will also affect how — and perhaps where — clinical trials are conducted. This week on the "First Opinion Podcast," Brennan, of Synlogic, talks about how the Supreme Court's ruling is forcing people involved in clinical research to rethink something as simple as pregnancy tests, which had once been...
Sep 28, 2022•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
