How I Overcame My Learning Disabilities To Become A Physician, Dr John Rhodes (Te Dx Talk)

Dr John Rhodes is a cardiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). In this TEDxCharleston talk from 2022 he speaks publicly, for the first time, about living with dyslexia, attention difficulties and other processing differences.

He describes scoring zero on the reading section of the medical school entrance exam, a reading specialist advising against his admission because he read too slowly, and not being diagnosed until he was 29, after struggling with his licensing exams. Formal testing showed that he read at a low secondary-school level but scored in the top percentile for visual-spatial ability. He went on to specialise in cardiology, where he uses imaging to picture how to guide catheters through the arteries, and later became a chief of cardiology.

He is careful to explain that he can read, but slowly, and that it takes him considerable time and effort. The talk is a frank first-person account of the gatekeeping and stigma that dyslexic doctors can face, and of finding a specialty that suits how your brain works.