Sanders advocates testing physician competence in everything from listening to heart sounds to diagnostic exercises involving actors mimicking patients. She is not against the latter but strongly argues for the implementation of both, believing that physical exams compete well with technical diagnostic procedures.

She is an evangelist for the return of the physical examination and its use by physicians who have abandoned it in favor of dependence on laboratory-, CT-, and MRI-based diagnoses. In addition to telling these clinical stories, Sanders expresses a marked interest in the training of young physicians and the retraining of physicians in practice. Selected cases vary from common diseases such as pernicious anemia to oddities such as cannabinoid hyperemesis, in which chronic marijuana smokers vomit repeatedly but can relieve hyperemesis by taking hot showers or baths. Every patient tells a story: medical mysteries and the art of diagnosis is a collection of similar stories. In the end, each medical mystery is solved and the underlying cause and therapeutic management of the disease or condition are described.

Eventually, consultation by a more experienced and/or specialized physician is initiated. Often the case is a difficult one and, not infrequently, one or more physicians missed a vital clinical clue or the correct diagnosis. She then describes how the physician pursued the diagnosis. In each Diagnosis column, Sanders presents to the reader the symptoms of a real-life medical or surgical illness that prompted a patient to consult his or her physician or go to a hospital emergency room.

Lisa Sanders, a general internist on the faculty of the Yale University School of Medicine, has become widely known nationally as the author of a collection of medical stories in the New York Times Magazine series entitled Diagnosis.

Lisa sanders new york times diagnosis