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The Medical Interview

Arch Intern Med. 2003;163:1131-1132.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

AN IMPLICATION of the phrase "taking a history" is that the doctor is performing an act of extraction similar to a dentist's removing a tooth. Indeed, the process is often as brutal as it sounds, an assault of closed-ended questions punctuated briefly by faint yes or no answers from the patient, who becomes alienated, uncooperative, and dissatisfied as the process continues.^1-5 In this issue of the ARCHIVES, Haidet and Paterniti⁶ suggest a better structure and metaphor for the medical interview, that of "building a history." While "taking a history" implies an aggressor acting on a victim, a taker, and a taken-from, "building" one allows for a joint effort between the doctor and the patient.

Although the engineering model is apt, we have come to think of the medical interview as offering doctor and patient the opportunity to create a work of art, an original narrative based on the story of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLE

"Building" a History Rather Than "Taking" One: A Perspective on Information Sharing During the Medical Interview
Paul Haidet and Debora A. Paterniti
Arch Intern Med. 2003;163(10):1134-1140.
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