Three Functions of the Medical Interview

Abstract

Many clinicians have learned their history-taking and interviewing skills as students by having gone to the patient’s bedside with a manual that provides guidelines for areas of inquiry. Such manuals usually contain hundreds of items pertaining to the organ systems of the body. The student’s task is to follow the manual to collect and eventually organize large amounts of data for presentation to the supervisor or visiting clinician. There should be sufficient data for a differential diagnosis. The patient’s role is simply to provide this data in response to questioning.