Articles & Interviews
This is a collection of my published essays, interviews, and articles centering around stories that look closely at medical gaslighting, racism, misogyny, and other inequities within medicine.
Each piece, in its own way, carries the same intention: to make medicine more human.
I also speak and write on these topics by invitation, for audiences seeking to build a more compassionate and equitable medical culture.
It’s free to join. Each week I share one story: personal, honest, and sometimes funny. Let’s talk about the kind of medicine that gives people hope again.
Articles
Browse by Areas of Focus
Medical Gaslighting
The Antidote to Medical Gaslighting — Validating Patients’ Concerns.
Medical Gaslighting and Medical Trauma — Live with Alyssa Burgart, MD
Ask the Patient: Why Medicine Still Doesn’t Listen — Long Covid, MD
Weight Stigma Is Bad Medicine — Physicians must work to break this cycle of bias.
Weight and Inflammation Part 1 — Ragen Chastain and Zed Zha, MD
Weight and Inflammation Part 2 — Ragen Chastain and Zed Zha, MD
Medical Racism
The Sickening Reality of 'White' Beauty Standards — From hair straighteners to racial surgery, the physical and emotional harm runs deep.
Think Twice Before Drug Testing Your Black Patients — It’s time for a bias check.
What Tyre Nichols' Death Reminds Us About Black Suffering — Medicine’s racist history bleeds into today’s medical practices.
Medical Misogyny
'My Womb Isn't My Legacy' — We must look beyond women's childbearing potential in healthcare and society in general.
You Choose: Do More Work for Free or Be Labeled as a Bad Colleague — Women in health, especially women of color, are paid less and asked to do more.
'Would You Like to Keep This Pregnancy?' I Asked My 13-Year-Old Patient — Having a choice can help end cycles of poverty among marginalized teen patients.
Rural Medicine
Who Is Providing Maternal Healthcare in Rural America? — Two family physicians struggle with longer hours and fewer resources yet thrive on the additional hugs.
Full Scope Primary Medical Care in Rural America — Prosperous Doc® podcast.
Fearing for Your Safety When You’re ‘Just a Country Doctor’ — A doctor from rural Washington recounts her fear after lockdown because of a gunman at large.
Are Any of Us Safe at Work? — The rising workplace violence toward healthcare workers.
Stop financially handicapping non-citizen physicians — How rural medicine can’t afford to disincentivize their foreign-born physicians.
Stop financially handicapping non-citizen physicians — The Podcast by KevinMD.
Humanism in Medicine
The Healing Power of a Doctor’s Apology — The power of a sincere apology made by a medical professional to a patient after making a mistake.
A Delivery Note — Forget the chart notes drained of all emotions. This is what I really mean to write.
The Embodied Pain Scale — An artful interpretation of the reductionistic numeric pain scale.
A Lesson in Cultural Humility — A “dramatic” patient or a dismissed patient?
Dear Xenophobia — What I saw on the frontline as an Asian American physician during the pandemic.
Personal Stories
Where is Home? — It’s somewhere very unexpected. The Academic Life podcast.
Mom 'stole' her daughter back from adoption center after she was misdiagnosed with brain damage — UpWorthy, based on my viral tweet.
Award-winning OpEd
Zed’s MedPage Today opinion piece on the importance of accessing abortions among underprivileged teens won Gold during the 24th Annual Digital Health Awards.