Bio

Sapana Adhikari, M.D. is a Nepali-American board-certified Emergency Medicine physician. She was born and raised in Corning, NY. She received her B.A. and M.D. from Boston University. She completed her residency at Boston Medical Center. Over the past 20 years, she has practiced in a wide range of settings, from inner-city trauma centers to rural hospitals in the developing world.

Adhikari is a medical illustrator who focuses on simplifying complicated concepts for the non-medical audience. Her first book is Diagnosketch: A Visual Guide to Medical Diagnosis for the Non-Medical Audience. She also works as a freelance medical illustrator with multiple clinics and hospitals, focusing on bedside patient communication.

Adhikari is an accomplished narrative medicine artist whose work has appeared in The National Academy of Medicine, Intima: The Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Frederic Jameson Gallery at Duke University. She has donated her art to the charity Musa Masala to raise money for the Wongchu Sherpa Memorial Hospital near Everest base camp. She teaches Medical Humanities at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Charlotte campus.

Adhikari is involved with international health and runs a non-profit organization, smartketi, that focuses on women empowerment and social entrepreneurship in rural Nepal (www.smartketi.com). In 2015, after the devastating earthquake, she was the medical director for Team Rubicon’s disaster response, Operation Tenzin. She worked with We Care Solar, setting up Solar Suitcases for Tamakoshi Cooperative Hospital in Manthali, Nepal. In 2018, her team won 1st Prize at the Entrepreneurship Competition at the Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy at Tufts University in Boston, MA, for their innovative solutions to a nutrition problem with the idea of a smartbakery.

She lives and practices medicine with her husband and three children in Charlotte, NC.