The Power of History Taking
“You must learn your history taking properly”, this is what most young medical students grow up hearing from their teachers. I still remember the second year of medical school in 1997, when we went to the wards and practiced history taking. We would carry our long notebooks with a pen in hand. We would stand awkwardly in front of the patients and ask questions one after another. Even as the patients were saying the answers, we would pause and write them down. This whole exercise was aimed at creating a coherent story to present during the case discussion with the teacher. For a major part of medical college, I never understood why we should ask so many questions some of them seemingly irrelevant. For example, we would examine a patient with an inguinal hernia, and would have to ask routine questions about type of diet, regularity of bowel movements, smoking, alcohol use, and other such questions. There would even be long winded discussions on how each of those aspects are important t