Instead, there were times when a diagnosis is a mystery story where doctors are the detectives trying to identify suspects and choose the perpetrator.

Seeing how this patient’s information was gathered, added to and put together, I suddenly realized that sometimes diagnosis wasn’t the multiplication tables, where four times six is always twenty-four-which is how most of us experience it. Sitting around a huge conference table some 30-40 doctors listened as a case was presented, one piece at a time, just as the patient had presented to the physicians in the Emergency Room. On my first day, I went to that meeting along with my resident, intern, and attending. When taking care of patients in the hospital, residents and faculty attending physicians meet every morning for what is known as the resident report. I was still a medical student, doing my first rotation in internal medicine.

I remember when I first discovered that part of what internists do is figure out medical mysteries. That interest is hard-wired into many who go into internal medicine. What drove your interest in helping people solve their medical mysteries? She agreed to speak to us before she takes the stage at Aspen Ideas: Health. She created and writes the biweekly “Diagnosis” column forThe New York Times Magazine, which inspired the hit television series House MD.

Lisa Sanders is an associate professor of medicine and teaches in the internal medicine residency program at Yale School of Medicine.

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