Alexandra Sifferlin

But a lot of what diagnosis is, is

Physicians or clinicians have basically gone through the very intensive medical training of, you know, in part just pure learning and memorization of how the body works when it's well and how the body works when it's sick and learning about various disease states.

You know, what are the symptoms of heart failure?

What are the symptoms of pneumonia?

What does a shingles rash look like?

And

Physicians learn to be very good at seeing a patient, hearing what is sometimes called their chief complaint.

So what are they most concerned about?

Looking at them, seeing sort of the physical signs of disease, listening to how it's affecting their body, and then really in their mind, immediately making this list of possibilities, ideally with the most common and likely diagnosis at the top.

And then as you go down the list, they have alternative explanations of what it could be sort of based on what is maybe less common, but still a possibility.

And ideally, while they're listening to you, they're sort of combining all this medical knowledge in their mind and they're reaching like, okay, it is most likely that somebody with these symptoms and somebody who is like my patient, age, gender, et cetera, based on, you know, lifestyle behaviors, you know, what have you, that they can sort of line up these diagnoses and they can do it pretty fast.

And then you have, you know, in some cases you need supportive tests like a diagnostic test, a blood test, a urine test, you know, what have you to sort of confirm that that is the diagnosis.

But I find that whole process of even just what a physician is doing kind of in the moment, within seconds sometimes, of hearing your conditions to be kind of amazing.

And ideally, over time, they get quite good at it through training and through seeing patients.

lots and lots of cases and lots of different iterations of pneumonia, heart disease.

You just, through that training, ideally come to see the different, you know, permutations of a condition.

Yes.

So it is very interesting because I think the appointment with the physician, as you mentioned, has changed a lot.

And some of that makes sense just with the emergence of more amazing technologies.

You know, through the history of medicine, you've gone from the physician sort of