1 simple trick for a more effective patient interview.

There’s so many minor things that you must do correctly throughout your CS exam in order to gain full points, and the interview is a major part of this process…

One of the more common mistakes I seen students making is treating the interview as one long laundry list of questions, which doesn’t do your score any favors… In order to put forth a much better interview, you should consider integrating a simple-to-use strategy that I like to teach my students… 

FRAMING! You probably don’t know what this means because it’s a term I’ve developed over the years to help my students excel at the interview portion of the CS exam, and I’m going to give you a look at what it is and how to implement it.

What is it? Framing is simply a strategy whereby we introduce each section of the interview (ex. Social history questions), get permission to proceed (ex. Is it ok if I begin?) and to thank them after they’ve answered the questions (ex. Thank you for answering those questions).

How to implement it: Simply follow this simple process in order to frame your interview properly… Step 1) Introduce each new section of the interview (HPI, PMH, Social hx, ROS), Step 2) Ask permission to begin asking each new line of questions, and Step 3) Thank the patient after each section of questions have been answered. 

That’s it… This is super-simple to implement yet highly effective at making the patient feel as though they’ve got a say in everything and it will make you seem much more in control and professional throughout your exam… All of which are important to your overall score!

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