Talking with patients

Brian Bird

Any patient who comes to a doctor, for whatever reason, deserves to be looked at with the broadest kind of vision. It is to be expected that the type of study made and its thoroughness will depend upon the nature and severity of the presenting symptoms, but, regardless of the overt injury or disease, one must, if he is to serve well, reach out in a sensitive way beyond the obvious, searching for the more subtle signs and causes of illness and distress -- signs and causes which patients so commonly do not themselves recognize. Of all the technical aids which increase the doctor's power of observation, none comes even close in value to the skillful use of spoken words -- the words of the doctor and the words of the patient. - Introduction.