factitous disorder

I have to say that few patients are more challenging and troublesome to busy clinicians than those with factitious illnesses. The term factitious disorder refers to any illness deliberately produced or falsified for the sole purpose of assuming sick role. Patients waste valuable time and resources with lengthy and unnecessary tests; this is fact of our living. Moreover, patients with factitious disorder often generate feelings of anger, frustration, or bewilderment in the physician. These patients violate unwritten rules of being a patient, so they do not act as patients, which should provide a reasonably honest history. It is famous their symptoms result from accident, injury, or chance and these patients hold the desire to recover and cooperate with treatment toward that end.
Factitious disorders likely have always been present throughout history and have appeared in the literature since the time of the Roman physician Galen. From a long time ago, it is described how some soldiers and seamen pretended illness to excite compassion or interest. New cases were described as reports where patients habitually migrate from hospital to hospital, seeking admission through feigned symptoms while embellishing their personal history.