Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method

Written by an eminent authority on interviewing techniques and resident training, Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method provides practical, how-to guidance on every aspect of physician-patient communication. Readers will hone their skills in patient-centered interviewing techniques whose effectiveness is documented by published evidence. Chapters present techniques for defining the patient's symptoms, making the doctor-centered part of the interviewing process patient-friendly, and handling specific scenarios. Also included are effective strategies for summarizing data from the interview, presenting these findings to colleagues, and using patient education materials. The book's user-friendly design features icons, boxed case vignettes, and use of color to highlight key points.

Written by an eminent authority on interviewing techniques and resident training, Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method provides practical, how-to guidance on every aspect of physician-patient communication. Readers will hone their skills in patient-centered interviewing techniques whose effectiveness is documented by published evidence. Chapters present techniques for defining the patient's symptoms, making the doctor-centered part of the interviewing process patient-friendly, and handling specific scenarios. Also included are effective strategies for summarizing data from the interview, presenting these findings to colleagues, and using patient education materials. The book's user-friendly design features icons, boxed case vignettes, and use of color to highlight key points.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Donald R. Frey, MD(Creighton University Medical Center)
Description:This concise paperback is an evidence-based approach to the patient interviewing process. Drawing heavily from studies in the interviewing literature, the work is an update of the 1996 first edition.
Purpose:The book seeks to present the basic skills and approaches needed for effective and efficient patient interviewing. Given the increasing reliance on invasive testing and medical interviewing to the exclusion of sound history taking, such a book is sorely needed. This work fills the niche well.
Audience:The book is aimed at medical student and resident learners of all levels. In fact, all clinicians for whom taking medical histories is important (and this should be all of us) will find the book to be a useful review. The author is a distinguished professor of both medicine and psychiatry.
Features:The book analyses the interviewing process from both the patient and clinician standpoint. Symptom defining skills are emphasized, and short, easy to follow vignettes are used to illustrate the book's interviewing approach. A "learning exercise" section, written in a question-and-answer format, follows each chapter and helps summarize the elements of each section. Finally, the section on patient education is particularly helpful in weaving education issues into the medical interview.
Assessment:This manual has the capacity to serve both as a teaching tool for students learning the arduous task of medical interviewing, and as a quick review for the busy practitioner seeking ways to more efficiently deal with difficult patients and multi-problem patients. The book's practical approach and readable manner will be appreciated especially by those clinicians who usually shy away from books with a psychological bent.