Description of the Unit

Although the health care interview unit is highly specialized, it serves a pragmatic purpose for all students.  First, this specialized unit illustrates the pragmatic need for interviewing skills in a highly technical discipline like medicine.   After learning this pragmatic need, this knowledge can easily be abstracted to other technical fields like law, engineering, and business.  Second, all students will take place in medical interviews, and consequently, a greater understanding of this interview situation can make them more informed consumers.  By completing this unit, students should be able to:

1) describe characteristics of the provider-patient relationship
2) explain skills necessary for getting appropriate information for an effective health care interview
3) enact skills necessary for giving effective information in a health care interview
4) discuss skills necessary for effective counseling in a health care interview.

Relevant Chapter

Chapter 12: The Health Care Interview

Potential Activities

• If your class is comprised of more advanced students, have them complete a journal article critique related to health communication.  In addition to summarizing, analyzing, and critiquing the substance of the article, they should also discuss the pragmatic implications of the article for health care providers in a medical interview situation.

• Interview health care providers about training they have received and skills they have acquired for the health care interview.  The class as a whole can discuss differences in interviewees' responses depending on the type of provider (e.g., differences between MD's, Osteopaths, Alternative Medical Providers, etc.).

• If your school or community has a medical school, you may be able to gain access to videotapes of medical students engaging in mock health care interviews.   Your class can analyze these interviews based on principles from the chapter.

• Many medical schools use "standardized patients" to simulate common medical conditions.  Those standardized patients are interviewed by medical students so the students can refine their medical interviewing and diagnosis skills.   You can implement a similar procedure for your class.  You can construct standardized patient profiles to simulate common ailments like frequent headaches, sprains, back pain, stomach aches, etc.  Students with interview partners can take turns being a simulated patient and health care provider.  Since most of your students may not be pre-med majors, they can assume that they are gathering information from the patient to provide the actual doctor with a summary of the patient's status and personal information.  This activity provides students with an opportunity to engage in both roles of the medical interview.

Daily Lesson Plan