The Blind Spot with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

Host Dr. Aditi Nerurkar sits down with Dr. Thomas VanderMeer, surgical oncologist and interim director of the Upstate Cancer Center at SUNY Upstate Medical University, to trade notes on the real work of caring for the data-informed patient. They start with a case. A woman with rising ctDNA, no imaging correlate, walking into Tom's office. He thought the conversation would be about the limits of detection. It wasn't. Her question, once he listened for it, was about her children, and whether the same molecular tests could tell her something about their risk. Tom uses the case to make a larger point. The question on the surface is rarely the question the patient actually came in with. From there, the two doctors get into the practice. The teach-back method as a check on real understanding. The discipline of not looking at your watch, even when the schedule says you should. And the throughline Aditi names back to him by the end of the conversation: open-mindedness and humility, held steady against the rigor of the science. Pfizer is a non-editorial sponsor of this content.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to The Blind Spot. Every misdiagnosis, every missed diagnosis, has a story. This show goes looking for it. In the premiere episode, host Dr. Aditi Nerurkar sits down with Dr. Nadine Jackson, gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Dana-Farber and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Their conversation starts with a simple question. What does it actually feel like to practice oncology right now, when the science is moving faster than the guidelines can capture it? Dr. Jackson is honest about it. Some days exhilarating. Other days exhausting. Most days both. From there, the two doctors move through the systems Dr. Jackson has built to keep up. The three questions she asks before every patient encounter. The mentor who told her "know what we know, start there." The argument running underneath it all: staying current isn't a luxury. It's part of the job. And the system has to make room for that work. Pfizer is a non-editorial sponsor of this content.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every misdiagnosis–or missed diagnosis–has a story. The Blind Spot goes looking for it. Each episode goes back to the beginning, as physicians revisit the cases that kept them up at night and patients recount the persistence it took to finally break through a diagnostic wall. The clues were often there. The question is why no one connected them. From systemic biases where a woman's chronic pain is dismissed as "emotional," to conditions that present differently across diverse patient populations, to the incredible administrative pressures facing providers doing their best. The Blind Spot reveals what it takes to see what medicine almost missed — and what it costs when we aren’t seeing each other clearly across the exam room.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.