UNTREATABLE.COM
Patient's 3-year-old has a cough. Patient has now spent 94 minutes on three Reddit threads, one Babycenter post from 2011, and a WebMD page that mentioned, in passing, a rare condition. Has arrived at the pediatric appointment with four theories already formed. The pediatrician has interrupted by minute two to say 'it's a cold.'
Chronic. Pre-visit research intensifies with each illness.
None. The pediatrician's diagnosis is, in patient's view, provisional.
Patients with Pathological Pediatrician Googling Pre-Visit typically present with some or all of the following:
Pathological Pediatrician Googling Pre-Visit belongs to the Institute's growing taxonomy of behaviors that real medicine has declined to name. It exists, roughly, at the intersection of internet culture, interpersonal friction, and whatever is happening in the lives of our patients. It is fictional and it is everywhere.
Under its Latin label Consultatio interneta pre-medica, the condition appears only in the Institute's own catalog. Real clinicians do not recognize the term. They recognize the behavior.
Think you have it? Find out what else you might be suffering from at the diagnosis generator. Or browse the full index of afflictions.