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Medical students′ disease, also known as hypochondriasis of medical students or medical student syndrome or medical student disorder is a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves or others to be experiencing the symptoms of the disease(s) they are studying. The condition is associated with the fear of contracting the disease in question. Some authors suggested that the condition must be referred to as nosophobia^{[1] [2]} rather than "hypochondriasis", because the quoted studies show a very low percentage of hypochondriacal character of the condition, and hence the term "hypochondriasis" would have ominous therapeutic and prognostic indications. The reference^[1] suggests that the condition is associated with immediate preoccupation with the symptoms in question, leading the student to become unduly aware of various casual psychological and physiological dysfunctions; cases show little correlation with the severity of psychopathology, but rather with accidental factors related to learning and experience.

Baars (2001) writes:

Suggestible states are very commonplace. Medical students who study frightening diseases for the first time routinely develop vivid delusions of having the "disease of the week"—whatever they are currently studying. This temporary kind of hypochondria is so common that it has acquired a name, “medical student syndrome.”

Hodges (2004), reviewing the literature, said that "the first descriptions of medical students' disease appeared in the 1960s." He may have been referring to the phrase, for the phenomenon itself was noted much earlier. George Lincoln Walton (1908) reported that