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The feedback loop that would make doctors better diagnosticians doesn’t exist.
Louise walked five minutes. Then her legs turned to stone. She stood at the side of the road, waiting for them to work again—and nobody figured out why for thirty years.
Author and New York Times Health and Science Opinion Editor Alexandra Sifferlin has spent years as a journalist fielding emails from patients who couldn’t get a straight answer from medicine—not because their doctors were incompetent, but because diagnosis is harder, messier, and more difficult to do in 15 minutes than anyone wants to admit. Her book The Elusive Body: Patients, Doctors, and the Diagnosis Crisis traces the problem from rural Kentucky to the NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Network, and her conversation with M4 Jeff Goddard, M1 Madelyn Klemmensen, and M2 Zach Goddard goes deep on the mechanics of how diagnostic errors actually happen: availability bias, the missing feedback loop, specialty tunnel vision, and the slow erosion of trust that pushes patients toward people selling them supplements.
The students here aren’t just asking sympathetic questions, although Jeff is literally a character in the book, something Dave found out in real time on this episode. They push on the hard stuff: when is a placeholder diagnosis ethical, whether AI will save us or become a crutch, and what do you actually do about a healthcare system where the patient bounces between docs who don’t have answers. What they keep landing on is uncomfortable—medicine doesn’t have great solutions to this, but the relationship between patient and physician might matter more than the technology of medicine. Solving the diagnostic crisis might mean uncomfortable, expensive changes.
Episode credits:
- Producer: Jeff Goddard
- Co-hosts: Zach Grissom, Madelyn Klemmensen
- Guest: Alexandra Sifferlin, https://www.alexandrasifferlin.com/
- Production: SCP Media Lab–Anna Roger, Cyrus Barati, Isa Perez-Sandi, Zach Grissom, Sarah Upton, Srishti Mathur, David Lee, and Jacob Thompson
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast belong solely to the individuals who share them. They do not represent the positions of the University of Iowa, the Carver College of Medicine, or the State of Iowa. All discussions are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Nothing said on this podcast should be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition. Always seek qualified professional guidance for personal decisions.
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Continue reading The Doctor Doesn’t Know Either: Inside the Diagnostic Crisis, with Alexandra Sifferlin