Complicated lives--taking the social history.

摘要

Traditionally, as I recently taught medical students on their first hospital rounds, the medical history consisted of the history of the present illness, followed by previous history, drugs, and allergies. Buried somewhere in there, usually after allergies and before examination findings, was the social history.As a medical student 20 years ago, I was taught to ask three questions to elicit the social history: "Do you work?," "Are you single or married?," and "Do you smoke or drink?" If you knew these three answers, you could avoid an examiner's further scrutiny - an easy path to a good grade.