The Question Doctors Forgot to Ask

by Daniel Sandoval -

Last year, a friend invited me to a conference on fibromyalgia (a chronic condition of widespread pain and fatigue that deeply affects the lives of those who have it) in Cali, Colombia. Like almost every event these days, there was a slot dedicated to talking about artificial intelligence in medicine. That's why they invited us.

At one point in his presentation, my friend shared something simple that stuck with me for a long time after.

He had asked one of his patients, almost out of habit, how are you doing?

The patient looked at him and answered with a honesty that stopped him cold:

"How do you think I feel, doctor, when I have this damn chronic pain every single day?"

It wasn't a complaint. It was the truth said out loud. The truth of the doctor, buried in diagnoses and protocols, had maybe never stopped to imagine.

I've seen it every time I walk into a doctor's office or hear someone tell me how their appointment felt like a formality. The doctor staring at the screen, typing, asking the bare minimum. The patient answering on autopilot. Neither one really there. It's not that doctors are bad people. It's that the system trained them to fix the symptom, not to listen to the person carrying it.

And those are two very different things.

We talk a lot today about artificial intelligence in healthcare. Apps that read scans, detect patterns, optimize diagnoses. And all of that is real. And all of that matters. But there's something no algorithm will ever be able to do, and no technology will ever replace a doctor who knows how to truly be present. That's called empathy. And it's, paradoxically, the most human advantage that exists in medicine.

No system is going to notice that a patient's voice cracks when they talk about their pain. No app is going to stay quiet for a moment longer because it sensed the patient hadn't finished saying what they needed to say. No AI is going to build the kind of trust that comes from someone looking at you in the eyes and asking how are you doing? and actually, wanting to know.

Technology can process millions of data points. But it can't replace the moment when someone feels truly seen. And in medicine, feeling seen isn't a luxury. It's part of the treatment.

That's what they went to school for. Not just to know which medication to prescribe. But to be on the patient's side. To listen to what doesn't always get said out loud. To ask the right question, even when the answer is uncomfortable.

Because no matter how much AI comes along, no system will ever be able to prescribe what a good doctor gives when they're truly present: the certainty that someone hears you, gets you, and is in your corner. That can't be programmed. It has to be practiced. And that, now more than ever, is what separates an extraordinary doctor from one who simply shows up.

Translated from Spanish, and available in Spanish : La pregunta que los médicos olvidaron hacer | by Daniel Sandoval | Jun, 2026 | Medium