Recently Accepted Medical Student Bombarded by Medical Questions

ST. LOUIS, MO – 22-year-old Jennifer Wilson found out 2 weeks ago that she was accepted into medical school.  “I was elated!” screamed Wilson.  “I had been running out to the mailbox every day and finally the letter came.”  Wilson has been on cloud nine for the past two weeks.  Friends and family have been flooding her Facebook messages and cell phone with congratulations.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  Well, Wilson is starting to dread checking her messages now from a very strange but real phenomenon that affects newly accepted medical students.

Along with every congratulatory message, email, and call, comes with a minimum of one medical question.  “At first I was really thrilled to have my friends and family ask me personal medical questions.  Uncle Jon asked about a rash he was having, and Cousin Peter described his painful urination issues at length.”  Things seemed to turn for the worse after the messages kept piling up.

“I found myself on Google quite a bit looking up medical conditions.  At first it was only a few hours a day.  Now it is up to 18 hours a day, and once I opened the floodgate, more questions start to come in.  One phone call from my family in Nebraska had 15 people ask me questions, all in one call.  There went my day.”

Wilson is now setting up a phone service and hiring two of her friends to help triage her Facebook messages.  “Geez, if medical school is anything like this, I don’t know if I can survive!”