Doctors: How long do you interview your patients?

Actually it depends on the clinical scenario. If the diagnosis is straight forward and absolute we do not have to take much of our time to interview a patient. If the conclusion is obvious, why do we waste time which can be used to manage some other patients! Sometimes when there are some troublesome differential diagnoses, we have to clarify the true diagnosis or narrow down the differential diagnoses. So we have to take some more time on interviewing them. But most of the time the patients do ...

Mahmoud AbdelAziz thank you for sharing this article to be discussed,
I think duration of patient interview differs according to speciality and the case. Short time interview affects the patient badly, the patient may feel that the doctor don't care about his case , he cares about the money paid.
I think Such a doctor will never gain the trust from his patients and will never give a good impact.
C...

Mahmoud AbdelAziz nice topic for discussion and completely agree with the research studies at the end of the article. But i must say that extra time for the patients in the clinics mentioned here are in an ideal situation. What would you do when you have 200 or more patients in a government setup and just a few doctors? It feels like a war zone and then every doctor has to improvise in order to tackle the situat...

In dentistry, after the patient enters the clinic, we mostly ask him to sit on the dental chair. The diagnosis along with the history taking takes on the dental chair. It usually takes 10-15 minutes. However, as mentioned by the fellow community doctors, the protocols change in the case of emergency. I believe that this part of history taking and patient interviewing is the most important part of the treatment as it lays down the base of the treatment. However, I have seen many physicians and G...

Mahmoud AbdelAziz It is very informative to doctors addressing about the time of discussion with patients. Author described in well defined manner considering the practical situations. The time is not a factor in my view, in the limited time how much information gathered is important. As Md Shamim Reza expressed it is dependent o...

Like what was already mentioned by Mahmoud AbdelAziz Md Shamim Reza , the duration of history-taking depends on the nature of the consultation. Based on experience, for patients who are coming in at the ER who are in an emergent condition (unconcious, severely dyspneic etc), ABC's come in first. This can be simultaneously don...

Very nice discussion. Patients always want to share details about their condition with doctors. I personally think that is logical and interview with patient shouldn't be shorter. But the situation does not allow that always. In my private chamber I try to discuss with the patients as much as possible. I spend 10 minutes with each patient in an average. But when I work at government hospital outdoor, there is no limit of patient. In Dhaka medical college hospital outdoor, thousands of patie...

The duration doctors spend with each patient varies according to some aspects. The specialty itself determines the types of questions and targeted data to obtain from patients. For example, emergency doctors have to deal with life threatened patients and every second matters. On the other hand, psychiatric doctors’ visits seem to last hours. They need to ask more broad questions and search for more answers. In between, the remaining specialities need about 15 – 30 minutes to be able to listen to...