Epstein, a physician, medical writer, and adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, wrote Get Me Out because she has always been intrigued by the gray zone of medicine — where doctors and patients make decisions not so much on scientific findings but on "what seems to make sense." Epstein was lured to the history of childbirth because the patient is healthy, which makes for an even more tense — or dynamic — relationship between doctor and patient compared to other fields.