Elisabeth R. Finch

Elisabeth R. Finch (born March 1978) is an American television writer best known for her work on the series True Blood and Grey's Anatomy.

Finch gained public notoriety for her abrupt resignation from Grey's Anatomy, which was prompted by an investigation into a series of lies that she told about her personal and medical history.

Career Finch began her career by writing a short film entitled Looking for My Brother, released in 2006. She was then hired as a writers' assistant on True Blood in 2008. She worked on True Blood until 2010 and was credited as a writers' assistant on 17 episodes, as an assistant to writers on five episodes, and as a writer on three episodes.

She wrote two episodes for the first and only season of No Ordinary Family, which aired on ABC from 2010 to 2011. In 2012 she began working on The Vampire Diaries and was credited as a story writer on six episodes, story editor on two episodes, and executive story editor on 15 episodes.

In 2015, Finch began working on Grey's Anatomy as a writer and producer. She wrote 13 episodes and produced a total of 172 episodes before she departed from the series. In these articles, she shared stories about her purported diagnosis with chondrosarcoma (a rare bone cancer), having an abortion while undergoing chemotherapy, losing a kidney, and undergoing a knee replacement due to misdiagnosis.

Finch had altered her appearance to appear sick while working on Grey's Anatomy and used stories about her medical diagnoses to gain accommodations at work, including deadline extensions and periods of absence. The investigation was prompted when Beyer contacted Disney and Shondaland with information that she had uncovered about Finch's past. During Disney's investigation, Finch refused to provide medical documentation or undergo an independent medical evaluation to substantiate her claims, and she was subsequently placed on administrative leave on March 17, 2022.

In December 2022, Finch released a formal statement confessing that she never had cancer.