In this report, I interviewed my mother primarily because most of my friends were not willing to give genuine answers. Besides, I felt that it would be easy to interview my mother since we are very close friends and I know her more than anybody else as I have been living with her from the time I was born. Presently, she is experiencing occasional back and joint pains, fatigue, increased sweating and breathlessness. Based on her past health, she has had several illnesses including cold and flu, allergies, depression, and overweight issues. She also underwent surgery for the treatment of fibroids. Looking at her family medical history, her father suffered from a stroke and high blood pressure. Moreover, her mother and one of her sister has diabetes. Her mother was also diagnosed with overweight issues and is currently struggling to overcome the condition.
Conducting the interview was not an easy task, and thus, I had to employ certain approaches to encourage her to cooperate and give out reliable information. First, I asked her open-ended questions. Using such questions aids in understanding the client's opinions and arouses their feelings on a particular situation or topic. Open-ended questions also motivate the interviewee to do most of the talking and spur the direction of the conversation. Secondly, I ensured that I listened to her emphatically. By so doing, I encouraged a non-judgmental and collaborative relationship with her. Thirdly, I avoided engaging in an argument and confrontation with her. Ideally, arguments usually cause certain clients to take opposite sides and may degenerate to power struggles. Fourthly, I embraced self-efficacy and optimism throughout the interview. In doing this, I offered to her certain possible treatment options for her current condition.
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Furthermore, I highlighted to her some examples of people who had similar medical issues and how they managed to overcome them. Finally, I capitalized in adjusting to her resistance to particular subjects of the interview rather than opposing them directly. Resistance is helpful as it allows the interviewer to respond in a lucrative way and taking the advantage of the process without being argumentative.
Despite the successful accomplishment of the interview, there were some challenges, especially when asking about the health history of her family. Her father died a few years ago because of stroke and high blood pressure. Therefore, I knew that by asking questions relating to family medical history would remind her of such painful incidence. However, In order to help her answer my questions appropriately, I employed empathy by offering inspiring comments without building an emotional connection. Besides, I maintained a humorous outlook to help in lightening my mood when listening to her painful story about her father and the prevailing condition of her mother and sister. I also ensured a professional attitude in order to uncover the source of her resistance and give her a chance to acknowledge her feelings. Moreover, it helped me to avoid being defensive by taking deep breaths to calm myself.
Taking health history was an enjoyable test and offered a great experience to me. Based on the various techniques I have learned in class, I was confident in the whole interview, and I was ready to overcome any potential challenges related to the investigation. In the past, I have also gone through several appointments with professional doctors, and thus, this empowered me to conduct the study without many difficulties. Many people face challenges primarily because of a lack of cooperation from the clients and the inability to control emotions. However, since I was interviewing my mother, I had a high sense of self-confidence, and it was easy to gain useful information without much resistance. Helping her to relax in particular situations was also easy.
During the interview, I employed various interviewing approaches including active listening, adaptive questioning, non-verbal communication, Empathy, validation, and reassurance, and partnership and summarization. Although I used the above-interviewing styles effectively, I had difficulties in coping with some of them. Listening actively to someone without making defenses or being confrontational is an uphill task. Nevertheless, I kept continuous eye contact with her and complete concentration through the assessment. Furthermore, I encouraged her using both verbal and non-verbal prompts to help her in expanding on her current symptoms. Adaptive questioning also posed a challenge to me since my mother detests questions. In dealing with that situation, I began with general questions and further making them more precise through the interview. I also asked for additional information by requesting her to clarify particular issues in her statements. Since summarizing of essential points is imperative in interviewing a client, I had difficulties in balancing the interview and noting down the most lucrative elements. Nonetheless, I overcame that by requesting for repeat explanation of certain points to aid in easy recalling even after the assessment.
After summarizing the crucial elements of health history, medical practitioners understand two main issues, which include the viewpoint of the client about their current conditions and how they say it. The things that the client highlights act as the factual content for a physical to use as the medical history and he usually edits and records as medical history. The doctor will thus use the information such as that of the family history to conduct tests mainly related to a particular disease in the family lineage. Besides, the medical assistant will revisit the information on the past illness and current symptoms to ascertain the possible disease of that particular client.
