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History taking

© Yasser Anathallee

After last month's article on communication skills, this time we will see communication skills applied. This month's article will be about history taking resources on the internet. First we will see some webpages about general history taking, then there are some about history taking in specific cases, e.g. psychiatric.

We will start with a site which is a Basic Clinical Skills Archive. http://www.medinfo.ufl.edu/year1/bcs96/i... As the name suggests, it offers a number of webpages pertaining to clinical skills, e.g. communication skills (I should have mentioned this in last month's article as well), medical interviewing skills and it also has a 'History and Physical Checklist', which is what is of interest to us at present. This is subdivided into 'History' and 'Physical'. 'History' is in turn divided into Medical History and Sexual History. Or you can go directly to the 'Medical History Taking Study Guide' (but it would be wiser to go through the index first to see all that's available on the site). http://www.medinfo.ufl.edu/year1/bcs96/c... Here you will get an outline for an interview.

http://www.im.org/cdim/5educate/curricul... GENERAL CLINICAL CORE COMPETENCIES HISTORY-TAKING AND PHYSICAL EXAMINATION Interesting page to learn about the objectives of history-taking and the rationale behind it all. You may pay particular attention to the bit about the attitudes that the student should have (just at the bottom of the page).

http://www.wmems.org/history.htm Here it's only in brief outline, but is helpful once you have a background of the subject. It may not be an ideal page to start with, but a brief summary as a supplement.

http://medicine.wustl.edu/~socc/manual/V... Vital Signs and History Taking Section A is about the vital signs and Section B has a 'History worksheet'. This may help you to get started with a format. You might, of course, modify it as you go along, but should come to a definitive systematic way of classifying the points, at least in your head, so that you don't miss anything.

Now, the pages about specific systems:

http://www.clinicacayanga.f2s.com/Histor... This page is entitled 'History Taking and Physical Examination'. It has links to pages each of which deal with a specific system. ( The musculoskeletal and neurological pages aren't available yet).

http://medmic02.wnmeds.ac.nz/groups/rmo/... This one is about chest pain and its differential diagnosis. It gives a list of important questions which you should go through.

http://www.mahidol.ac.th/mahidol/ra/rapc... The page's title is 'BRIEF OUTLINE FOR PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY TAKING', and it does just that.

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