Dr. Lisa Sanders
Ep. 18 — A young television news producer watches a colleague save a life by doing CPR and finds her true calling in medicine / Dr. Lisa Sanders, Yale School of Medicine and New York Times Columnist. Early in her career, becoming a doctor was the last thing on Lisa Sanders’ mind. She loved the television news producing business and was happy with her life. Then one day, while shooting an episode on white water rafting, Sanders watched her doctor colleague save an elderly woman from drowning, through CPR. It wasn’t an overnight transformation. But it was an inevitable one, she says. Sanders decided to go to medical school. Since then, Sanders has blazed a unique trail as a doctor and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Education at the Yale School of Medicine, as well as a book author, journalist, and television consultant. She is the author of two popular columns in the New York Times about medical mysteries, called Diagnosis and Think Like a Doctor. She has a new book based on those columns. On that eventful white water rafting trip so long ago, Sanders and her colleague, were testing out their television station’s brand new satellite news van. Decades later, she continues to be fearless about using new technologies in the field of medicine. This time, she’s harnessing the massive power of the Internet to crowdsource diagnoses and bring relief to those suffering, sometimes for decades, from lethal diseases for which there is no name, cure, or reprieve. This Summer, Netflix released a new documentary series in which Dr. Sanders uses that novel, albeit somewhat controversial, technique of global crowdsourcing to help solve eight medical mysteries. Sanders is also helping to reshape the way in which doctors communicate with patients and to give patients and their loved ones a bigger voice in the often skewed power dynamic. She brings to that commitment her own personal experiences with the medical system, having watched both her mother and sister die without warning and finding the interactions with their doctors deeply lacking in both data and empathy. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. When it Mattered is a podcast on how leaders deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: My guest today is the renowned physician, author and journalist, Dr. Lisa Sanders. She's Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Education at the Yale School of Medicine. Many of you know Dr. Sanders from her two globally popular New York Times columns about medical mysteries; Diagnosis and Think Like a Doctor. Chitra Ragavan: The Diagnosis column inspired the hit Fox television series, House, M.D., for which Sanders served as a technical consultant. And now a new Netflix New York Times series also called Diagnosis, showcases Sanders using global crowdsourcing to help diagnose and solve eight medical mysteries. Sanders new book Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries is a compilation of 50 stories from her column. Dr. Sanders, welcome to the podcast. Lisa Sanders: Hi, thanks so much for inviting me, Chitra. Chitra Ragavan: You majored in English in college at William & Mary, and you wrote for your school paper, the Flat Hat. And after you graduated, you became a television news producer. So what prompted you to give up television and go to medical school? Lisa Sanders: Well, I loved television and I loved the news business, but one day... and it happened over time; nobody really turns on a dime, no matter how they tell the story. But so, one day I was out with the correspondent that I usually worked with, Bob Arnot, or at least I worked with him for years, and we were doing a story about whitewater rafting. And suddenly, he disappeared from the television monitor where I wa...