Most physicians were trained to believe Munchausen by proxy is vanishingly rare. Andrea Dunlop has spent years talking to the clinicians, survivors, and researchers who know otherwise. In this conversation with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, she makes the case that the condition is far more common than the medical community recognizes, and that the structural reasons physicians miss it are themselves a form of institutional blind spot.


Dunlop, creator of the award-winning podcast "Nobody Should Believe Me" and founder of the nation's only nonprofit dedicated to survivors of this abuse, walks through how the pattern actually appears in a chart, why clinicians are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation by perpetrators, and why a child aging out of pediatric care does not mean they are out of danger. The conversation keeps returning to a single orienting principle: the child is the patient, not the parent. When that distinction gets blurred, the consequences can be fatal.

Most physicians were trained to believe Munchausen by proxy is vanishingly rare. Andrea Dunlop has spent years talking to the clinicians, survivors, and researchers who know otherwise. In this conversation with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, she makes the case that the condition is far more common than the medical community recognizes, and that the structural reasons physicians miss it are themselves a form of institutional blind spot.
 Dunlop, creator of the award-winning podcast "Nobody Should Believe Me" and founder of the nation's only nonprofit dedicated to survivors of this abuse, walks through how the pattern actually appears in a chart, why clinicians are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation by perpetrators, and why a child aging out of pediatric care does not mean they are out of danger. The conversation keeps returning to a single orienting principle: the child is the patient, not the parent. When that distinction gets blurred, the consequences can be fatal.

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.

Every misdiagnosis&ndash;or missed diagnosis&ndash;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.&nbsp;
The Blind Spot reveals what it takes to see what medicine almost missed &mdash; and what it costs when we aren&rsquo;t seeing each other clearly across the exam room.

The Blind Spot with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

"The Child Is Your Patient": Andrea Dunlop on the Medical Abuse Hiding in Plain Sight

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/189d6e3c-9af2-4caf-9df5-b48f01376364/transcript