Here I am enumerating the reasons for providing as much details as possible by patient.

It helps build a better doctor patient relationship

It helps optimize further management of patient including any tests and medicines.

If a detailed medical history and an in-depth clinical examination are done before providing a provisional diagnosis, it can help save patients health and life.

If the patient is being referred from one doctor to another, the previous doctor should provide all medical details and tests, so save time and costs for patient. It also helps save effort of the doctor.

When a doctor asks many questions to the patients, it generates confidence of patients in the doctor and avoids unnecessary tests and medicines.

In many diseases like trigeminal neuralgia, allergy, common cold, urticaria, etc where history only would be diagnostic and could save life, money, time and health.

While taking medical history, patient should be taken into confidence. If doctors follow the medical ethics, patient will start trusting doctor. Caregivers could be misguiding, so the patient should be interrogated thoroughly. Only when patient is disoriented or comatose, we can ask questions to their relatives.

A good doctor patient interaction is usually 15min for history, 15 min for physical examination, 3-4 investigations and 2-3 medicines depending on the diagnosis and patients’ choice.

A patient should convey to the doctor whether he wants to take any medicine or would like to get better by natural or home remedies.

In coming days, AI tools are increasingly becoming available for detailed history taking. If such a software is available, then patient should spend enough time and give a detailed history to the AI questions so that it can provide the relevant details to the treating physician.

A detailed clinical history and clinical examination still continue to go a long way in patient’s management. There is no short-cut for doctor to save patient’s health and life.

Even when using teleconsultation like Ask A Doctor service, patient should provide as much details as possible to avoid misdiagnosis and mismanagement of health condition.

Written by Dr Vaishalee Punj