Huhahh!! I had the second history taking session today at the Clinical Skills Unit. The entire session was only 8 minutes i.e. 7 minutes of history taking by me and 1 minute of comments from the simulated patient, and it was video-taped. Wow....I was so high-spirited throughout the entire session, even till now, I feel so excited about it, although, well, I didn't get graded as Excellent I guess. But I had a lot of fun even that was only a talking session with the sp. Luckily I practised taking history with my friend before the session. Huhhah!
So what's history taking all about? I didn't know that a person with so little medical knowledge can take history from the patient! And usually only by taking history from the patient, the doctor is able to diagnose about 70% of the illness. It can be said that communication plays a very vital role in it!
Basically, as a medical student, every time we take history from any person, whether he or she is a real patient or a simulated one, we have to introduce ourselves and ask for permission to take history. Then we start off the session by asking about the patient's personal information like his or her age, occupation, marital status and so on. And then we ask about the illness. From there, we find out the cause, severity of the illness and as well as the associated illness, which is the illness that is brought about by the initial illness. After that, we ask about family medical history and then we move on to the patient's habit like if he or she smokes or consumes alcohol.
Overall I find it very interesting, well, I'm quite impressed of my performance actually. At least for the 7 minutes I didn't get stammered and stop talking in the middle of the conversation. Although, of course, there are a lot more to improve, I actually was given the comment by the SP that I seemed to be more concern about her family background rather than her illness, in which the scenario was that her foot got caught in the drain and got swollen.
Heeh...Relieved and energetic!
