A wastebasket diagnosis or trashcan diagnosis is a vague diagnosis given to a patient or to medical records department for essentially non-medical reasons. It may be given when the patient has an obvious but unidentifiable medical problem, when a doctor wants to reassure an anxious patient about the doctor's belief in the existence of reported symptoms, when a patient pressures a doctor for a label, or when a doctor wants to facilitate bureaucratic approval of treatment. It differs from a diagnosis of exclusion in that a wastebasket diagnosis is a diagnostic label of doubtful value, whereas a diagnosis of exclusion is characterized by the diagnosis being arrived at indirectly (through the process of excluding all other plausible causes). Unlike a vague wastebasket diagnosis, the diagnostic label arrived at through a process of exclusion may be precise, accurate, and helpful.
The term may also be used pejoratively to describe disputed medical conditions.[1][2][3][4][5] In this sense, the term implies that the condition has not been properly classified. It can carry a connotation that the prognosis of individuals with the condition are more heterogeneous than would be associated with a more precisely defined clinical entry.[6] As diagnostic tools improve, it is possible for these kinds of wastebasket diagnoses to be properly defined and reclassified as clinical diagnoses.[7]
Wastebasket diagnoses are often made by medical specialists, and referred back to primary care physicians for long term management.[citation needed]