Are You Suffering from “Medical-Student-Itis”?

The Huffington Post recently highlighted an inside joke shared within the medical community. Dubbed “Medical-student-itis,” it refers to a trend among medical students to self-diagnose themselves with every new disease they encounter during their studies. While this occasionally can be entertaining, it can also interfere with your studies. After all, spending time worrying about whether or not you have scurvy (here’s a hint: unless you’re a pirate or live in a third-world country, you probably don’t) is far less productive than hitting the books.

The good news is that -- just like many diseases -- medical-student-itis can be treated. Let’s count down three ways to cure a bad case of this common ailment among medical students.

1. An Ounce of Prevention
We’ve all heard the expression, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If you eat right, make time to exercise, and get enough sleep, you’re likely to be in good physical health. Not only can this help keep you feeling your best, but it can also prevent you from exhibiting the host of symptoms which typically accompany junk food binges, lack of physical activity and a string of late nights and overnighters.
Now let’s return to that whole scurvy thing. While it’s possible to have scurvy and not be a pirate, some rare cases do affect landlubbers, but only those landlubbers suffering from extreme deficiencies of vitamin C. If you’re already eating a healthy diet consisting of plenty of vitamin C-rich foods, and unless you have other contributing factors, such as alcohol misuse, homelessness, or a gastrointestinal disorder, you should automatically be able to cross scurvy off of your list.
So what is causing your exhaustion, irritation, and other symptoms? The answer may be more simple than you think: try the fact that you’re a medical student managing the rigors of life in medical school. You’re going to occasionally feel tired, frustrated and annoyed. It goes with the territory.
Which brings us to our next point...

2. Think Horses Not Zebras
Another old expression is often applicable to medical-student-itis: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.” What does this mean, exactly? When it comes to medical diagnoses -- and almost everything else in life -- your best guess and your most likely guess are one and the same.
As human beings, our minds often leap straight to the unthinkable. While Dr. Gregory House may have specialized in brilliant diagnoses of unconventional disease after unconventional disease, the majority of doctor visits don’t involve medical puzzles. If you come down with flu-like symptoms, it’s flu season, and the flu is going around campus, you’re likely dealing with flu. But if your mind leaps straight to malaria -- especially if you haven’t recently visited a tropical or subtropical region of the world -- it may be time to reign in your imagination.
The truth is that “zebras” do occasionally occur in a medical context. But at the end of the day “common things are common.” In other words, it’s not about what’s possible, but about what’s probable. You’ll likely learn in medical school that this principle applies to clinicians when diagnosing and treating patients. Guess what? It also applies to you.

3. Bypass the Internet
Everyone’s an expert on the internet. But who knows if you’re calling on the advice of a precocious 11-year-old when you hit up a chat room to try to determine whether the fact that you smelled toast this morning means that you’ve got a brain tumor. (Could it be that you were walking past a bakery?)
Doctors spend many years in medical school, and it’s not just about getting a degree and some fancy letters after their name. It’s also about amassing the information that qualifies them to give out medical information. Next time you’re inclined to let your fingers do the walking resist the temptation to google your runny nose. With the wrong information, that sudden case of the sniffles can quickly blow up into a life-threatening spinal fluid leak...but fortunately one which exists only in your own mind.

4. See a Real Doctor
One last thing to keep in mind? While medical students don’t often come down with the diseases they’re studying, not all medical students are automatic hypochondriacs. Zebras do exist, and the unlikely can and does sometimes occur. If so, an unchecked case of medical-student-itis can lead to bigger problems, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
And while this piece pokes fun at the subject, the truth is that this condition -- which also goes by the more respectable-sounding names of “medical students’ disease” and “nosophobia” -- can not only lead to medical students avoiding medical care when it’s actually needed, but can also be a “signal of general emotional distress and conflict,” according to findings published in the Journal of Medical Education.
The overall takeaway? If you’re experiencing serious symptoms, or if you continue to feel like something is wrong even after you’ve moved onto the next chapter in your textbook, checking in with your physician can ease both your symptoms and your mind.