Subtitle: “When patients diagnose themselves, it’s usually WebMD... and wrong.
There are many things that can make a nurse’s heart skip a beat: a flatline on the monitor, a code blue overhead… and a patient (or family member) who starts a sentence with, “I Googled my symptoms," and…We’ve all had that one shift. The one where every patient believes they’ve discovered the hidden diagnosis that years of medical training, diagnostic imaging, and clinical experience somehow missed—thanks to a quick 3-minute search and a rabbit hole on Google. This is the tale of a night where I wasn’t just a med-surg nurse... I was the unwilling co-star in an internet-fueled episode of Diagnosis: Delusional.
The Shift of Self-Diagnoses
It all started innocently enough. I walked into Room 408, ready to do my assessment. The patient, a sweet older lady, immediately said:
"Nurse, I think I have a rare Amazonian parasite. I Googled it, and the symptoms are a perfect match."
The symptoms?
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Headache
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Fatigue
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Stomach upset
She had Googled her symptoms—headache, fatigue, and a little stomach upset—and somehow landed on a tropical illness last seen in two episodes of House MD. She showed me her phone (brightness on max, font size “Boomer XL”) with an article titled: “10 Deadly Parasites That Could Be Lurking Inside You Right Now.” I smiled, nodded, and reassured her that she probably hadn’t contracted a parasite from a TV remote or the hospital Jell-O. You know, the same things that happen when you’re dehydrated, tired, or just… alive. I smiled politely and explained that Google might not be the most accurate doctor. She looked at me like I was hiding the truth. "But Nurse, the internet said only 10 people in the world have this parasite, and I could be the 11th!"
The Epidemic of Dr. Google
By 10 p.m., it wasn’t just Room 408.
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Room 410 was convinced he had stage 4 scurvy because his lips were dry.
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Room 412 told me she had smallpox (it was an allergic rash).
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A visitor in Room 414 cornered me in the hallway and asked if we had antivenom for a snake bite—from 3 years ago.
I swear, half the shift was spent reassuring people that WebMD doesn’t replace a real MD.
Room 410: The Case of the Pirate Disease
Next came a middle-aged man with chapped lips who firmly believed he had scurvy. “Nurse, I haven’t had orange juice in 3 days. I’m definitely vitamin C deficient. ”Sir, you had a full order of chili cheese fries and a Pepsi 20 minutes ago. The kicker? He asked if I could order him a “vitamin C infusion” and possibly a “banana bag... to be safe.” I told him he could start with a hospital juice cup and a multivitamin like the rest of us.
Room 412: Full Body Rash, Full Blown Panic
This patient had developed a mild rash from a laundry detergent allergy. Totally manageable, totally not contagious. But her teenage daughter had Googled the symptoms and was now convinced it was smallpox. Yes—smallpox.
The disease that was eradicated in the 1980s. She even showed me a WebMD comparison chart and asked, “Do we need to alert the CDC?” Let me check with them, right after I finish giving this Zofran.
👩⚕️ Room 214 Visitor: An Unsolicited Consultation
Not to be left out, a visitor pulled me aside in the hallway: “My brother was bitten by a snake 3 years ago. Do you think it’s related to his ankle swelling now?” Unless the snake is a ghost and still holding a grudge, I’m going to say... no.
The Award-Winning Quote of the Night
One family member even said, “We’re pretty sure he’s got early-onset Werewolf Syndrome.”
… I didn’t even ask.
Why Nurses Fear Dr. Google
Look, we love that patients want to be informed. It’s not that patients being curious is bad—knowledge is power! Really. But when every headache becomes a brain tumor and every rash is a deadly infection, it turns a normal med-surg floor into a walking, talking episode of House MD—minus the witty one-liners and with twice the confusion, it becomes a special kind of exhausting. You end up spending more time un-diagnosing people than actually helping them. And there’s only so many times in one night you can say, “That’s highly unlikely... but we’ll monitor it.”
Nursing Rule #27: Humor is the Antidote
By the end of the shift, I had joked with another nurse that we should start offering Google detox sessions:
- 1 dose of reality
- 2 Tylenol
- And a friendly reminder that Google does not have a nursing license
Final Thought: Letter to our patients
In the end, patients just want to feel heard. And sometimes, that means hearing them out—even if they’re convinced, they have jungle parasites, pirate diseases, or ghost snake venom. So, to all my fellow nurses: Stay calm. Stay caffeinated. And if someone tells you they diagnosed themselves with a rare medieval illness from Wikipedia... just smile, nod, and offer them a juice box.
Next up in Med-Surg Mayhem:
Episode 5: CNA Hide and Seek – An ode to every nurse who’s ever said, “Where did my CNA go?”
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