The Health Design Podcast

The ABCs of an Effective Doctor Visit — with Robin Shapiro

What if the key to better healthcare isn't just better medicine, but better conversations?

In this episode of the Health Design Podcast, I sit down with Robin Shapiro — health advocate, co-founder of Allied Health Advocates, and co-founder of Health Advocate X — to unpack what it really takes to get the most out of your time with a doctor.

Robin traces her career back to a single phone call from a patient with rheumatoid arthritis who couldn't use her hands to diaper her baby — a moment that sparked a lifelong mission to amplify patient voices. We discuss the ABCs of an effective doctor visit (Agenda, Bring a buddy, Compassion), the realities of the 20-minute appointment, and why a notebook might be the most powerful tool you bring to the clinic.

We also dig into the thorny questions emerging in modern medicine: Should patients be allowed to record consultations? How is AI reshaping diagnosis, adherence, and the doctor-patient dynamic? And when the diagnosis isn't clear, how do doctors and patients co-pilot through the uncertainty together?

From the importance of second opinions to the weight of a doctor's words, this is a conversation about humility, compassion, and navigating the system when it matters most.

Guest: Robin Shapiro — Co-Founder, Allied Health Advocates; Co-founder, Health Advocate X

Host: Moyez Jiwa

ABOUT ROBIN L. SHAPIRO

Robin L. Shapiro is an author, speaker, and a nationally recognized pioneer in the health advocacy movement. She has worked in healthcare communications, public affairs, and patient advocacy since 1988. She founded Health Advocacy Strategies, co-founded Health Perspectives Group (now called Reverba), and in 2008 co-founded Allied Health Advocates, one of Washington state’s first independent patient advocacy firms. In 2012 she co-founded the nonprofit now known as HealthAdvocateX, where she serves as Board Chair Emerita. Her 2019 book, The Secret Language of Healthcare: How to Ask for the Care You Deserve, gives readers the questions and the language to use in common medical situations. She launched the podcast Well Said Health in 2026. She holds degrees in journalism and political science from the University of Missouri and lives in Seattle.

ABOUT WELL SAID HEALTH

Well Said Health is a twice-monthly interview podcast hosted by Robin L. Shapiro. Each episode opens on a health situation most people will eventually face, follows one real story through it, and closes with the specific questions, words, and resources a listener can use. The show is built for adults making care decisions for themselves, their children, and their aging parents. Well Said Health is not medical advice. https://rss.com/podcasts/well-said-health/

Health Design Podcast — Haresh Patel, Founder of Sanare

Haresh Patel joins the Health Design Podcast to share his fifty-five-year medical journey — from a misdiagnosed skin condition to a deeply personal discovery that the mind, body, and spirit are inseparable when it comes to health. After years of navigating a fragmented healthcare system where shrinking appointment times and over-specialization left no one connecting the dots, Haresh built Sanare: a platform that empowers patients to become the CEO of their own health.

We explore how Sanare helps patients centralize their medical records, build a complete life-event timeline, and use AI to match with the right practitioners — not just the nearest specialist. Harish shares powerful stories from his own experience, including how a childhood trauma surfaced decades later as a sleep disorder, and how a veterinarian-turned-doctor finally asked the questions no one else had thought to ask.

This conversation dives into the biopsychosocial model of illness, the 133 million people stuck in "diagnostic limbo," and why the future of healthcare may depend less on technology and more on simply asking the right questions.

Teaching Medical Narratives: Pre-Health Students and the Future of Human-Centered Care

What happens when you teach storytelling and reflection to future doctors before they ever set foot in medical school? In this episode of the Health Design Podcast, host Moyez Jiwa sits down with Eric Last, a veteran primary care internist, and Genie N. Giaimo, an associate professor of writing studies and rhetoric at Hofstra University, to unpack their groundbreaking course that brings medical narratives into the undergraduate classroom.

Together, they discuss how immersing pre-health students in the humanities — through writing, storytelling, and honest conversation about illness, caregiving, and loss — can fundamentally reshape how the next generation of clinicians relates to patients. Eric and Genie share moving moments from their classroom: students opening up about their own chronic conditions, caregiving responsibilities, and encounters with a healthcare system that too often fails to listen.

The conversation also confronts the structural forces threatening humanistic medicine — the rise of concierge practices, the commodification of care, physician burnout, and the financial pressures that push young clinicians onto a hamster wheel. Can a new generation of students, armed with narrative tools and a commitment to connection, push back against a system that treats patients as widgets? And what does it cost — personally and professionally — to choose mission over money?

Topics covered:

Why pre-health undergraduates need the humanities now, not in medical school
Writing as a tool for professional resuscitation and burnout prevention
The tension between relationship-based care and a commodified healthcare system
Concierge medicine, access, and the ethics of who gets heard
How students are already advocating for themselves and their future patients
Guests:
Eric Last — primary care internist, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra
Genie N. Giaimo — associate professor of writing studies and rhetoric, Hofstra University

Professor Gary David returns to The Health Design Podcast to explore how we can design experiences that foster connection, belonging, and shared meaning — especially in healthcare settings.

Drawing on his background as a sociologist and experience designer, Gary discusses the concept of "communities of the moment" — how shared experiences, from ringing the bell after chemotherapy to using inclusive pronouns like "we" and "team," can elevate everyday interactions into something greater than the sum of their parts.

The conversation takes a deeply personal turn when Gary shares the story of his daughter's surgery at a Children's Hospital and the baffling, jargon-filled denial letter he received from his insurance company. It becomes a case study in systemic misalignment — where different parts of a healthcare system work against each other, leaving patients and caregivers confused, anxious, and financially vulnerable.

Gary introduces his upcoming book, The Un-Wow: Your Blueprint to Experience Design of All Kinds, which argues that the most meaningful experiences often come not from grand "wow" moments but from small, everyday acts — what he calls micro-affirmations. He makes the case that everyone in a healthcare system, from surgeons to coders to cleaning staff, plays a role in shaping the patient experience, and that technical competence alone doesn't make someone a good leader.

The episode closes with a reflection on workplace culture, the difference between doing and leading, and why experience design is ultimately a people business.

Learn more at theunwow.com and listen to Gary's podcast, Experience by Design.

Dr. Eugene Manley joins the Health Design podcast to share a harrowing personal experience navigating the US healthcare system after foot surgery. While on Medicaid, he encountered medical racism, falsified chart notes, and a hospital system determined to discharge him before he was ready — despite his surgeon's objections. He describes how physical therapists misrepresented his condition in his records, blocking his access to skilled nursing care and leaving him vulnerable at his most fragile moment.

The conversation broadens to explore how capable people are misread by systems not designed to understand them. Eugene discusses his late-diagnosed ADHD, the cognitive cost of masking in workplaces, and how neurodivergent individuals — especially those who are also Black or from underserved backgrounds — are forced to fit boxes that waste their potential. He and host Moyez Jiwa examine the economic and human cost when talent walks out the door because it doesn't conform, and the troubling rollback of DEI initiatives in the US.

Eugene also discusses the funding crisis facing Black and Hispanic-led nonprofits, the chilling effect on scientific research, and his upcoming book "Too Much and Not Enough: Neurodivergence, Race, and Broken Systems." A powerful, candid conversation about what happens when systems fail the very people they're meant to serve.