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Think Like a Doctor: Work a Diagnostic Case

Maps to: Physician · Registered Nurse · Physician Assistant · Emergency Medicine · Medical Researcher · Public Health

Figure out what's wrong with a made-up patient, like a real doctor.

You leave with your top 3 guesses for what is wrong with a patient. It shows you can narrow it down one clue at a time.

You're going to work through one made-up sick patient, like a puzzle, from your first guess to your final decision. Ask him questions, then reason your way to an answer: what's most likely, and what you'd do about it. By the end, you'll have thought one full patient story through, start to finish.

How this shows up on a resume or college app

I worked through clinical cases the way medical training teaches diagnostic reasoning, building a problem representation, ranking a differential diagnosis with my reasoning, choosing the test that would change my mind, and making a triage call under uncertainty, then published my written workups (on fictional practice cases). I learned that good clinical reasoning is judged by the quality of the thinking, not just whether the final label turns out right.

When you finish you have the thing itself, plus a Common App activity description Sidequest drafts from what you actually built.

Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as a physician first and see how the work feels.

See what this career pays and what it takes to get in.

The plan

1
Step 1
Get your patient and figure out what's wrong
Meet your patient, Leo: 16, a soccer player, out of breath at practice for six weeks. Write one sentence saying who he is and what's happening to him, plus your first guesses at what it could be.
2
Step 1-2
Ask your patient questions, don't guess
Most of the answer comes from the questions you ask, not from a medical picture like an X-ray. Ask Leo: when did it start, what does it feel like, what makes it better or worse, what else is going on, and is there anything about his life or his family that makes an illness more likely. Every question should make one of your guesses more or less likely. Collect what you need before you pick your final answer.
3
Step 2-3
Say what you think, before you're told
This is the real test, and the rule is: say it before you peek. Write your answer down in full before you find out anything, because an answer you have committed to is the only one that can teach you something.
4
Step 3
Now find out, and see what you'd change
Your answer is written down, so now you get to find out. Leo's test results say what he has, and you write down one thing you would think through differently next time. Being wrong for good reasons is exactly what good doctors do.

Go further

What counts: A write-up: a short piece that shows how you got there, clear enough for someone else to follow.

5
Step 3-4
Write it up, and see what it says about you
Turn everything you did with Leo into a write-up: a short piece of writing that lays out your thinking all the way through, from the one sentence describing him to what you'd do right now. Then you pick one part of it for Dr. Rivas to question. This is a real piece of writing that shows how you think.