Deposition Prep Under Stress — Why Good Doctors Give Bad Answers

A competent, experienced physician sits down for a deposition. He’s under oath. The plaintiff’s attorney points to a chart entry — a staph skin infection two weeks before the patient’s back pain visit — and asks one question: “Would you have ordered an MRI if you had known?” The physician answers, “Yes. Yes, I probably would have.” One sentence. One concession. The defense just lost its strongest argument. The answer wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t ignorance. It was biology.In this episode, Bryan walks through the moment a deposition turns, Sarah unpacks how plaintiff’s attorneys engineer those concessions and why a single phrase can collapse a defense, and Michael brings the frontline clinical and physiologic perspective: what the SAM and HPA stress axes actually do to executive function under cross-examination, why careful clinicians become unrecognizable in a deposition chair, and the concrete preparation habits — answer framing, pause discipline, and pre-thought responses to predictable questions — that any physician can build before they ever get served.Educational purposes only. Not legal advice. Not medical advice.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecharteddefense.substack.com/subscribe