Abstract

PEREZ IRONS, Inés; SANCHEZ RODRIGUEZ, Roberto; ROSELLO PEREZ, Lilesne  and  SINTES COBAS, Luz Martha. A Spanish-English practical guide for the doctor-patient interview at the General Comprehensive Medicine Office. ACIMED [online]. 2008, vol.17, n.5. ISSN 1024-9435.

ANTECEDENTS: Though students from medical schools start studying English with specific purposes in fourth and fifth years of their studies, there is not any didactic material or guide that helps the future professionals to make a correct doctor-patient interview in English, an essential step to make a right clinical diagnosis about any disease of patients. OBJECTIVES: To make a guide with the most frequent questions (general or specific) that Comprehensive General Practitioners need to interview their patients, either in English or in Spanish. METHODS: During 2005 _2006 the authors visited the two offices of the CGP of "Manuel Diaz Legrá teaching policlinic in Holguín province weekly. The aim of the visits was to set up a statistical record with the questions asked by the doctors in the interview to the patients. Later, the questions were organized according to the frequency of use. Those highly used were gathered and were distributed in interrelated classes according to the structure of the interview. Finally, the most frequent questions were included in the guide with their equivalences in English. RESULTS: A total of 120 general and specific questions frequently used to interview a patient were selected in the specialty of CGM. With these questions the doctors obtain information about the patients, such as general information, chief complaint, symptoms, past medical history, onset of the disease, those necessary for a correct diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: This practical guide easies the communication of Spanish speakers doctors with patients that speak English. It is also a teaching aid for medical students and doctors in undergraduated and postgraduated courses.

Keywords : Doctor-patient interview; General Comprehensive Medicine; Spanish-English guide.

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