It is no secret that
Grey’s writer Elisabeth Finch drew on her
own experience with misdiagnosis for Bailey’s storyline. Both incidents, though, point to a persistent, often overlooked problem in medicine: women’s symptoms are often diminished and dismissed by doctors.
And, earlier this week, this issue was underlined when Karina Wagenpfeil tweeted photos of a practice exam question from Medscape.
In the multiple choice question, medical students are asked to choose a diagnosis for a woman who goes to the hospital for physical pain not detected by various lab tests.
The “correct” answer to the question is Munchausen syndrome, a mental disorder characterised by deliberate acts to seem ill to receive attention. Other options are somatisation disorder, conversion disorder, hypochondriasis, and malingering — none of which, Wagenpfeil points out, are physical disorders.
