Popular doctor uses Netflix series to reveal patients’ own expertise
There are some physicians who forbid their patients from going online to type in their symptoms, fearing they’ll get incorrect information or become more anxious. Dr. Lisa Sanders is not among them.
Sanders, whose monthly “Diagnosis” column in the New York Times Magazine inspired the hit series House, has a more practical — and democratic approach — to so-called Dr. Google.
“I actually think that no matter what doctors said or when they said it, patients have been discussing their illnesses as the first symptoms happen,” she said.
“By the time a patient brings their story to me as their primary care doctor, they’ve already run it by their best friend, their spouse, their mom, their kids — they’ve told their story to everybody. It turns out that the internet is now just one more everybody you tell your story to. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Sanders doesn’t just think crowdsourcing isn’t bad, she’s harnessing the internet and social media in her work diagnosing unusual cases. This month, she’s showing off that approach to a whole new crowd: Netflix users.
The new seven-part documentary series Diagnosis, piggybacks on her Times columns by profiling seven patients as they track down a diagnosis, from a Gulf War veteran in New Mexico to a girl with seizures in New York City.
In the series, Sanders consults as the patients and their doctors seek various treatments, go down blind alleys and seek advice on social media, from patients and doctors alike. More voices in the mix mean more dizzying options, but some lead to unexpected solutions.
The little girl in New York with seizures is told by one doctor that an operation to remove half her brain is the “gold standard.” But her parents decide to keep looking and instead choose a less invasive brain implant, an option they found out about through feedback.
Jonathan Chinn, an executive producer alongside Scott Rudin and his cousin, Simon Chinn, said the series highlights the benefits of technology — in this case to connect a global village of experts.
“We focus a lot on the negatives of technology — spying and a lack of privacy — but this is an example of a way that technology, if harnessed the right way and responsibly curated, can actually save lives and make peoples’ lives tangibly better,” he said.
While there’s a lot of misinformation online, Sanders thinks patients are becoming more critical about where they get their information. She thinks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health have excellent information, and even Wikipedia can be helpful so long as the entries are edited by “people who have skin in the game.”
Sanders is a champion of patient-centred care. If, in the past, doctors dismissed patients’ experiences, those days must come to an end, she says.
“The way I see a medical interaction is it’s a conference between two experts. I am the expert on bodies, how bodies work, how bodies don’t work and what we can do about it. What the patient is the expert on is that body and how that body feels,” she said. “There is no one who can tell you how the patient feels except the patient.”
Sanders said she hopes doctorstune into Diagnosis, to better understand what their patients go through.
“I think one of the things that doctors will take away from this is how hard it is for patients to live with this kind of uncertainty,” she said.