Small talk
The weather is nice today, isn’t it?
Did you find the way here easily?
Picture of the patient
What is your name?
What is your occupation?
How old are you?
What activities do you enjoy?
What is your marital status?
Do you have any children?
How many children do you have?
How do you spend your free time?
What is your life goal?
What problems bother you?
Do you smoke?
Do you use alcohol?
Gathering information about the symptoms:
How often do you have headaches?
Do they last for a long time?
How long do you headaches last?
What do they feel like?
What treatment have you tried?
Have any of the treatments helped you to get rid of the headache?
Have any of the treatments helped you to relieve the headache?
Have you even noticed any pattern in development or reduction of the headache?
Do you often become stressed?
What situations make you stressed?
Can you rate them in some way? For example, the most stressful is...
How often each one of them occurs?
Do you often feel comfortable?
Do you feel stress at home?
What changes do you want to be introduced into your life not to have any stress?
Do you know any benefits of stress?
Purpose of the interview
Purpose of the current interview is to gather information about the patient and the nature of their headaches in order to identify its reason. The interview aims to establish whether the headache results from stress or there is some other factor causing it. After the reason is identified, the patient will have an opportunity to be advised appropriate treatment which will release and take away their headache.
Structure of the interview
The interview starts with a small talk in order to give the patient an opportunity feel more relaxed and comfortable. Later they are asked some personal information in order to find some data out about the patient’s personality, mode of life, marital status, etc.
Finally, questions about the problem are asked in order to obtain information about the nature of the headaches and identify whether these come from stress.
Questions to avoid
If it is noticed that questions about some particular topic make the patient worry, these should be avoided. Questions about personal life should be avoided as well (except those about marital status and children because these might provide information which is useful for treatment)
Analysis summary
Problems with sleeps are very likely to be result of stress which was experienced by the patient. However, with time and after appropriate medication the problems disappeared and the person managed to maintain his normal sleep. When I hear that a patient has chronic headaches and problems with sleeping, the first thought which comes to my mind is that the person had some serious problems or stress and as a consequence, has the present problems. I also believe that these should be addressed as soon as possible before they contribute to development of diseases which are very difficult to be treated.
The person was not a complainer, however, it was noticed that he lacked sleep. He mentioned his problem when talking with the closest people, but did not reveal any information about it in public. He was not …