CONSIDER THIS: You get a headache one morning. Your muscles ache, and your neck is tight. You, on the other hand, aren’t going to let it deter you. You must get out of bed because you must attend a meningitis lecture.
You listen to the lecture from your seat. Symptoms and risk factors for meningitis in children…You take notes as the presentation discusses certain case studies. They’re not as thorough as usual since you’re feeling a bit queasy. If you forget something, you can always go back and listen to the lecture again.
Before you realize it, it’s the next day. You begin by going through your notes from the day before, but they aren’t very good. You’re still suffering from a headache, and you’ve developed a fever. You play the lecture and listen to it. You start updating your notes on the risk factors and symptoms of meningitis… Headaches, nausea, a stiff neck, a fever…
Just a moment… Couldn’t possibly be, could it?
AND THAT’S WHERE IT ALL BEGINS.
That nagging sensation. At first, you disregard it. However, the symptoms appear to be manifesting in greater numbers.
You’re concerned you have meningitis before you realize it when there’s probably a simpler diagnosis.
MSS (Medical Student Syndrome) is the name given to this phenomenon.
What Is Medical Student Syndrome?
Medical student syndrome is a sort of self-inflicted hypochondria in literature. It usually begins when a person reads or learns about a disease or sickness and believes they have it. As a result, it is an example of apophenia. It doesn’t just affect medical students; everybody who reads is at risk. However, it is thought to be most common among medical students.
Students must master syndromes or symptom lists for a variety of uncommon and dangerous diseases as part of their medical education. Students are prone to believe that they have a symptom or indication related to these disorders after reading about them.
For example, the student could read about a brain tumor that causes headaches. If the person has a headache by chance, he or she may suspect they have a brain tumor. It doesn’t just affect medical students; everybody who reads medical literature is at risk. It is, however, most commonly seen among medical students.
What are the other names?
It’s also known as “medical student illness,” “intern syndrome,” “second-year syndrome,” “third-year syndrome,” or “insert-year here syndrome”.
This condition is becoming increasingly widespread as individuals utilize the Internet and rush to their physicians with numerous print-outs of uncommon illness symptoms when what they really have is something common and innocuous.
It’s one of the drawbacks of the free and abundant information available on the internet, especially when the material is of doubtful quality or obtained by a novice who is unable to temper the knowledge with a reasoned and educated viewpoint.
Influenced by time
Though it may happen at any point during a physician’s career, it is most frequent in India during the first clinical year, internship, and postgraduate education year.
How To Stay Away From The Medical Student Syndrome
Here’s how to keep yourself from succumbing to medical student syndrome so you can stay on track.
- Exposure therapy
- Expand your clinical illness knowledge and put it to good use.
- Make a rational argument with yourself based on your expanding knowledge.
- Accept it as a condition and embrace it.
- Take preventive/precautionary actions to lower your risk of developing a sickness (and consequently your dread of it) in the first place.
Botton Line:
Medical school can, ironically, be detrimental to a student’s health. The lifestyle that medical students live is undoubtedly worsening medical student syndrome. Sleep deprivation, stress, and drug misuse all contribute to the risk of mental illness among medical students.
It may be inferred that medical students are more sensitive to disorders such as Medical Student Syndrome and that there is a need to educate medical students about the signs of MSS, as well as to help them by addressing various stress-reduction measures.