Communication: part 1 - soliciting information from the patient

Soliciting information from the patient is a key part of the consultation. Successful clinical outcomes are reliant on the practitioner asking questions to gather relevant information regarding, for instance, the patient’s history and symptoms and their responses to examination tests. This information needs to be gathered in a time efficient manner and in a way that encourages the patient to feel relaxed and fully engage with the eye examination. Practitioners often report that soliciting relevant information can be made difficult by over-talkative patients who take up valuable time giving lengthy, perhaps irrelevant, answers. Alternatively, patients may provide insufficient detail due to discomfort, anxiety or a lack of understanding. Finally, patients can at times appear overly concerned with providing the ‘correct’ answer to certain questions. This article describes some ways to optimise the complex process of soliciting information from the patient focusing on selection of question type, question wording and the role of eye contact. Examples given are based upon research analysis of video-recorded optometric consultations.