Poh Si Teng, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and former ABC News executive, left her job and used her own savings to make "American Doctor," a documentary about US doctors volunteering in Gaza. The decision followed the killing of her colleague, journalist Samer Abu Daqqa, in an Israeli drone strike in December 2023, which she said left her unable to continue working as she had before, particularly given what she described as silence from peers in the journalism industry.

The film follows three American doctors, Mark Perlmutter, Feroze Sidhwa and Thaer Ahmad, treating wounded children in a Gaza hospital while speaking out publicly in the US about what they witnessed. Teng deliberately excluded "Palestine" or "Gaza" from the title, reasoning that American audiences respond to medical drama framing, and she wrestled with the ethics of showing graphic footage of injured children, ultimately including it after a tense on-camera exchange with Perlmutter. The documentary is produced with Watermelon Pictures, whose co-founder Hamza Ali is an executive producer.