Watching Your Interview

If you want to develop your skills for interviewing a patient and obtain a complete history, you need to see patients as frequently as possible. Just as importantly, you need to spend some time reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses. Watching yourself on video/DVD has been shown to be very useful for this, even if you find it embarrassing at first. We suggest you follow these steps.

  1. Review the Interview
    Watch the video/DVD as soon as possible after interviewing the patient. If you took notes during the interview, use these as a guide to the facts you obtained, but also reflect on how you felt at different points in the interview. What seemed to go well? What left you feeling uncomfortable? Look at the sub-headings on the handout. Have you considered all the relevant sections?

If you made a video in year 2 EE, what were the differences and similarities between your performance in that video and this? Have you changed aspects of your interviewing technique as a result of feedback/reflection from that video?

  1. Define the Problems
    Write down the areas you need to work on. Keep it as detailed and specific as possible. For example:
    The patient told me about some symptoms but I didn’t understand their relevance.
    The patient talked about their feelings and I wanted to explore this in more detail but I didn’t know how to.
    The patient asked me questions about the illness but I didn’t know how to respond.
  2. Brainstorm Possible Solutions
    Taking each problem in turn, use your current knowledge and experience to consider possible options of what you might say if you were to repeat the interview.
  3. Define your Learning Priorities
    If you have several problem areas, decide which one area you would like the group to help you with.
  4. Find the Relevant Part of the Tape or DVD

Find the part of the interview that seemed to trigger the problem for you. Set the tape/DVDexactly at the beginning of this section and bring it to the group session. There will only be time to play a short excerpt from the tape/disc (one or two minutes)