When I got to the third year, when you actually get out of the classroom and go into the hospital and see how doctors work, I saw that what I thought of diagnosis was was wrong much of the time-or for the most exciting parts, in any case.I found out that was not the multiplication tables, but it was Sherlock Holmes. She also became an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She then joined Yale's Department of Internal Medicine and became an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, teaching in the Primary Care Residency Program at Waterbury Hospital. She graduated from Yale as the oldest member of her medical school class and went on to complete residency there, ultimately serving as chief resident. Sanders has joked that she was accepted by Yale School of Medicine in a slot reserved for 'weirdos'-entering at age 36, she was considered a 'non-traditional' student, but one presumably enriched by life experience and work in other fields.

She soon enrolled in the postbaccalaureate pre-medicine program at Columbia University to fulfill the requirements for medical school admission. As a journalist, she was particularly drawn to stories about medicine and, after seeing a fellow journalist (who was also a medical doctor) save someone's life after a boating accident, she decided to pursue a career in the field. But she began to grow tired of working in the newsroom environment. Sanders won an Emmy for her reporting on Hurricane Hugo for CBS News. After graduation, she was hired by ABC News. She majored in English at the College of William & Mary, writing for her school paper, The Flat Hat, and tending bar at a local tavern.

As a child, she loved reading about Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.

In 2019, Netflix began airing the program Diagnosis, featuring a selection of cases from her column. Her column was the inspiration for the television series House M.D., and she worked as a consultant on the show. She is an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital, which serves as the model on which Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital was fashioned for the series House M.D. In 2002, she began writing a column for The New York Times called Diagnosis, that covered medical mystery cases. Lisa Sanders (born July 24, 1956) is an American physician, medical author and journalist, and associate professor of internal medicine and education at Yale School of Medicine.

New york times medical mysteries