Why you'll probably be misdiagnosed in your lifetime

September 15, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In the early 2000s, Diana Se, then a medical student, felt a hard lump beneath the skin on the right side of her neck. It was fixed in place, slowly growing, and she recognized the red flags from her own classes. But every doctor she consulted dismissed it: a swollen lymph node, an infection, or just anxiety—medical students, they told her, imagine symptoms. Years later, she finally got the lump scanned. While still in the scanner, she saw the technician’s face through the window and knew something was wrong. Her doctor called before she could even climb the stairs: it was a tumor, already infiltrating her lymph nodes and wrapped around an artery. During surgery, the artery wall disintegrated when the surgeon tried to stitch a leak. Diana woke up hallucinating—she thought her grandmother’s arm was in her lap—because she was having a stroke. The tumor had been diagnosed far too late.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:22) **Emily Kwong Introduces Diana's Story** - Host Emily Kwong sets up the episode by introducing Diana, a med student who found a concerning lump on her neck.
2 (02:03) **The Tumor's Devastating Consequences** - Diana's delayed diagnosis leads to a life-threatening surgery and a stroke.
3 (03:25) **Introducing the Diagnosis Crisis** - Emily frames the episode around the systemic problem of diagnostic error and introduces guest Alexandra Sifferlin.
4 (05:21) **The Staggering Scope of Misdiagnosis** - Alexandra reveals the shocking prevalence of diagnostic errors, based on a major report.
5 (06:21) **Systemic Causes: Time and Structure** - Alexandra and Emily discuss the root causes of the problem, focusing on the structure of the healthcare system.
6 (07:36) **A Master Diagnostician's Approach** - Emily asks about Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, a professor of medicine at UCSF who is considered a master diagnostician.
7 (09:43) **Diana's Perspective as a Diagnosing Physician** - Diana, now a pediatric neurologist, explains her own diagnostic process.

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Show Notes

Nearly every person will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime. That means either a delayed diagnosis, a wrong diagnosis – or no diagnosis at all. That’s according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine from 2015 on diagnostic error. Today on the show we talk to a physician who was personally affected by the crisis, and New York Times editor and author of the book The Elusive Body: Patients, Doctors and the Diagnosis Crisis.

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