Gurpreet Dhaliwal

Gurpreet Dhaliwal MD is a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He is the site director of the internal medicine clerkship at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, where he teaches medical students and residents in the emergency department, urgent care clinic, inpatient wards, outpatient clinic, and morning report. His academic interests are the cognitive processes underlying diagnostic reasoning and clinical problem-solving and the study of diagnostic expertise.

Considered one of the most skillful diagnosticians and clinician-educators in the U.S. today, he regularly mesmerizes audiences of hundreds of medical professionals as he correctly diagnoses cases meant to stump participants. The New York Times said, “To observe him at work is like watching Steven Spielberg tackle a script or Rory McIlroy a golf course.”

In presentations, Dr. Dhaliwal shares insights on how we think – and how that affects the quality of our decision-making—from what facts you ignored or included and what shortcuts your mind took to what biases affected your decision and what forces shaped it (tradition, evidence, habit). Believing that examining our thinking is how we develop knowledge, wisdom, curiosity and humility, Dhaliwal impresses audiences with his poise, humor, and ability to articulate his real-time thinking in an accessible way.

Dr. Dhaliwal sees patients and teaches medical students and residents in the emergency department, inpatient wards, and outpatient clinic at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, where he often puzzles through multiple mysteries at a time.

A beloved teacher, he also co-chairs the education committee for the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, and hopes to broaden the "cognitive apprenticeship" model of teaching diagnosis. "Diagnosis is our most important procedure," he says. "My ultimate goal is for diagnosis, clinical reasoning and cognitive psychology to become a basic science for medical students and residents, just like anatomy or physiology."

Dr. Dhaliwal is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators and the UCSF Department of Medicine Council of Master Clinicians. He has won multiple teaching awards and has published more than 70 articles in leading medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He has been a visiting professor at multiple universities across the U.S. and in China and Japan.

He writes and speaks on physician leadership, physician engagement, and the need for physicians to engage in high-value care.