What’s it like to be a patient as a doctor?

Contradiction in terms

“Doctors often delay seeking treatment. They will try to diagnose themselves, and they treat themselves,” says Robert Klitzman, psychiatrist and author of When Doctors Become Patients.2 As doctors progress through their careers there’s a change in their attitude towards seeking healthcare, he tells The BMJ. Whereas, anecdotally, medical students often attribute their own minor symptoms to the serious diseases they’ve learnt about, Klitzman notes that more experienced doctors tend to downplay the severity of their symptoms and under-diagnose conditions in themselves.

Research also suggests that a sense of embarrassment can act as a barrier to doctors seeking healthcare. While they may experience the same embarrassment around symptoms as any other patient, their job can add other layers of discomfiture. They may have concerns that the treating doctor will think that they’re over-reacting or that they’ll be shown up if their own diagnosis of their symptoms is wrong. Doctors may worry that they’re imposing on a fellow medic’s time—or that there’s simply something inherently embarrassing about being a doctor who becomes a patient.3

Klitzman explains, “Some doctors say …