OVERVIEW
This page is dedicated to organizing various examples of standardized exam questions whose answer is factitious disorder. While this may seem a odd practice, it is useful to see multiple examples of how factitious disorder will be characterized on standardized exams (namely the boards and the shelf exams). This page is not meant to be used as a tradition question bank (as all of the answers will be the same), however seeing the classic “test” characterization for a disease is quite valuable.
QUESTION EXAMPLES
Question # 1
A 40 year old woman comes to the clinic with multiple scratches, sores, and abscesses on her upper thigh. She is concerned that these findings have been present for the past few weeks and have not yet healed. She has n idea how the sores came about, and is worried that they will spread to other parts of her body. The patient is a nurse who is well known in the clinic because she had a very similar prevention about 3 years ago. During her previous encounter in the clinic, her skin lesions were severely infected (some even were found to have fecal bacteria in them) and did not respond to usual treatment. On a separate occasion, this patient was hospitalized with a spreading infection and cellulitis that required intravenous antibiotic therapy. She has no other medical history. What is the likely diagnosis here?
Page Updated: 09.20.2016