Patients and Their Lives: Psychosocial and Behavioral Aspects

Abstract

When visiting the doctor, patients bring not only their bodily complaints but also the circumstances of their everyday lives-who they are and might hope to be. In bedside and office encounters, patients often pour out their histories without much prompting, but, often too, the stories must be elicited and questions asked in the interview. Such accounts are important because in the telling the patient is no longer a stranger. We learn who the patient is, how he or she lives, and how his or her life impacts decisions to seek medical aid, choices of help (if any), attachment to (or leaving) the doctor, cooperation with diagnosis and treatment, and compliance with medical advice-elements of illness behavior and the experience of illness. Thus, in the functions of the medical interview, the elicitation of this psychosocial information about the patient is useful for relationship building, diagnosis, and the tasks of management-for the doctor’s job of personal care.