Nursing majors run risk of over-diagnosing as their medical knowledge grows
By Melissa Nip
Nursing professor Diane Vines had to sit down and confront her colleague a few years ago. She told her colleague, a psychotherapist, that her friends were getting annoyed with her because she would always diagnose them with various mental and physical illnesses due to her medical knowledge.
"She diagnosed physical diseases in others," Vines said. "She did this all the time with her friends when they didn't want to know."
This is an actual condition called "medical student syndrome." Medical and nursing students are susceptible to believing that they or others exhibit a symptom of a malevolent illness, and in severe cases, the paranoia takes over their lives.
For example, a person could read online that a headache is a symptom of a brain tumor. Once they start to get a headache, they become paranoid and unsettled that they have a brain tumor.
"I've definitely seen this in nursing students studying medical, surgical and mental health," Vines said. "We try to help students because they can become obsessed and can't work as well in clinical settings."
Vines said that sometimes she has to stop herself from intervening or diagnosing her friends and family.
"I have to catch myself, not say a word, and try to put it out of my mind," Vines said.
Nursing student Brigid Moriarty had an experience at which she was afraid that she had ovarian cancer when she learned about it as a nursing student over the summer.
"Because ovarian cancer has vague symptoms such as back ache and nausea, for a good two days I wondered 'What if I have that?'" Moriarty said.
Moriarty said that working in a clinical setting makes you more cautious about catching diseases and illnesses.
"When I would work with an isolation patient I would always ask myself, 'Did I get into contact with anything?'"
She has friends who have had similar experiences. They would have symptoms, run through a whole possible list of diseases and try to diagnose themselves. Eventually, they would consult their respective doctors.
"Even if you think you have weird strange disease it's better to know about it and possibly prevent it and just go to the doctor," Moriarty said.
Senior nursing student Leah Winter was the most anxious about becoming ill during her clinical rotation when she was working with a man with MRSA.
"I just tried to block it out," Winter said.
However, there are some circumstances where it is appropriate to be inquisitive and to make sure not to overlook possible symptoms that friends or family have.
"I was just out of nursing school and a member of my church was having paralysis in his thumb," Vines said. "He asked me what I should do."
Vines told the man that she didn't think that the man's symptom meant anything and even an internist told him that it was nothing.
The paralysis progressed and eventually the man was paralyzed from the neck-down due to a brain tumor.
"There's always the risk of taking other's too seriously and not seriously enough," Vines said.
Vines believes that it is important to find a balance, and know when it is appropriate to intervene. She said that some nursing students in fact underdiagnose themselves because they think that their symptoms are relatively minor in comparison to their patients.
"Many times nurses in war zones don't report symptoms of stress or PTSD, because they feel like they have an easier time than the soldiers in war," Vines said.
It seems that the general attitude of UP nursing students is not paranoia and fear.
President of the UP Student Nursing Association Richard Botterill said that, in general, nursing students aren't overly-concerned about getting an illness but are more centered towards their patients.
"Our focus is really client based," Botterill said. "It's the ethics of UP nursing and the way we were taught."
Winter worries about her family members potentially falling ill, but doesn't think about it too often.
"When I hear about their symptoms and complaints I wonder what they could have," Winter. "But it's not like I let it take over my life."
Botterill finds that worrying is counterproductive.
"If it's happened, it's happened," Botterill said. "Worrying isn't going to do anything."
Moriarty always comes back to her senses quickly when she gets anxious about possibly having an illness. When she thought she had ovarian cancer, she simply went for a run and realized that her back pain and nausea went away.
"You can't be paranoid all the time," Moriarty said. "You have to look at yourself in the mirror and say 'Do I really have all these symptoms or is it just in my head?'"
