Writing Sample - Essay

8/7/2019 Writing Sample - Essay

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Shweta Krishnan

Writing Sample – Essay

Hypochondria and the Internet Savvy Patient

It is tough to be a doctor in the internet era. You dissect human cadavers. You read

books that weigh a ton. You stay up late nights. You become addicted to caffeine. You

replace songs on your iPod with abnormal heart sounds. You learn to recognize the rarest

diseases. And then, your first patient walks into your room, having already diagnosed himself

from the Internet. And that is when you realize you just went through four years of medical

school but never learned anything about the new disease that will soon drive you nuts -

cyberchondria.

I realized that cyberchondria –the anxiety that stems from looking up symptoms onthe internet – was evolving into the doctor’s new nightmare, when a patient would not believe

me when I diagnosed him with a common cold. He insisted that he was dying of psittacosis, a

rare respiratory illness that he had seen on the internet. He even listed the symptoms

correctly, and said pigeons roosting on his roof had passed it on. I later learned that 1.4

billion people around the world use the internet to check their medical symptoms. One in

three of them, according to a Microsoft survey in 2008, suspects that he or she is terminally

ill.

From a doctor’s point of view, few things are more difficult than convincing these

patients that they do not suffer from a certain disease. Needless to say, many doctors ask their

patients to stop using medical websites to diagnose themselves. But internet surfers do not

listen to the experts, and health is now the fifth most googled-word, after porn, dating,

terrorism and religion. So it may be time for doctors to quit complaining, and to adopt a new

approach to battling fear-mongering on the internet. They could become informed guides

who help the layman navigate online medical information in a meaningful and useful way.

Doctors have seen patients who are anxious about their health for many centuries.

Some medical historians believe that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, kept records of

such patients and came up with the word “hypochondria” to describe their extreme anxiety.

Today, doctors call patients hypochondriacs only if their anxiety disrupts their daily lives for

over six months, and if they need anti-depressants or psychotherapy to get by. Experts say

that this includes 5 percent of the population in developed countries.



Cyberchondria is a supercharged version of hypochondria. Before the internet, a very

small section of anxious patients would take the trouble to get hold of a Merck manual, or

wade through jargon-rich medical books and journals to diagnose themselves. But medical

websites have made that information accessible to even the most casual worriers. As a result,

according to a 2008 Microsoft survey 40 percent of the population in developed countries,

feel “overwhelmed, confused or frightened” by the medical information on the web. Some

doctors treat these patients with placeboes, just to help them relax. Others try to reassure

them and fail. Such sessions frustrate both doctors and patients.

But, maybe what patients really need is empathy. Doctors only have to look back at

their own lives, to remember how most of them started their careers as “hypochondriacs” (a

whopping 70 percent, according to a 1998 Lancet article). I must confess that I turned quite

paranoid in my second year of medical school. My temples had been throbbing for a week,

and after pouring over my textbooks, I decided that a glioblastoma multiforme -medical

jargon for a really bad brain tumor - was growing right behind my eyes. For a week I worried

that before I died, I would lose my memory, my sense of smell and even control over my

bladder. Then, I discovered that I simply needed new glasses. In the following months, I

temporarily “suffered” from bipolar disorder, breast cancer and endometriosis. Experts say

that medical students’ syndrome, as we call it in the profession, is only a natural

psychological response to the sudden influx of medical information. So, it is only fair to

expect the average internet surfer to react similarly.

However, medical students get over their paranoia more easily than cyberchondriacs

simply because they have access to accurate medical information. On the other hand, patients

browsing through websites feed on unreliable and inaccurate information that sometimes

worsens their fears. In 2005, researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska institute showed that

about 70 percent of medical websites that turn up on internet searches fail to cite their

sources, or update their information regularly. While Google search engines use algorithms to

sort medical websites according to the rating professionals give them, Yahoo search engines

do not have a similar safety net.

Medical professionals can help the situation by offering to work along with their

patients. An experienced doctor or nurse can easily educate their patients on how to tell good

websites from inaccurate ones. They can also remind these patients to look for recent

information and reliable sources. Hospitals are now roping in experts to manage their medical



databases and run their newsrooms. Forums and chat rooms run by hospitals, often moderated

by nurses, are better sources for patients than the many random websites that turn up on

Google searches. Many hospitals also encourage their patients to get in touch with their

doctors through email, and allow them to skip the trouble of making an appointment unless

they are seriously ill.

However, some doctors fear that the internet is ruining traditional doctor-patient

relationships. A recent op-ed in the New England Journal of Medicine carried examples of

patients who have replaced their physicians with WebMD. But other studies in the British

Medical Journal show that the internet had not affected consultation rates around the globe in

a bad way. In fact, some hospitals report an increase in patient registrations in the last decade.

Medical students’ syndrome does not last a life-time, and neither should

cyberchondria. As doctors-in-training, my colleagues and I learned to desensitize ourselves

to our fears and to remain detached but interested readers. So, I cannot think of anyone better

than doctors to help their patients get over their initial paranoia, and use the internet wisely.

Of course, doctors will never completely eradicate hypochondria. But we can pull the plug on

fear mongering on the internet.

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Writing Sample - Essay