If a patient provides incorrect answers during an interview, what should you do?

If a patient provides incorrect answers during an interview, what should you do?

• A. Ask to verify his answers
• B. Use his answers and background and treat medical problems as they arrive
• C. Ignore and proceed
• D. End interview

Answer: (B)

In emergency care, you can’t let potentially incorrect or unreliable patient answers halt treatment. The priority is to address life threats and active medical problems based on the current clinical picture. You gather what you can from the patient’s history and background, but you proceed with a systematic assessment and immediate management of problems as they present. Verifying every answer would waste precious time, and ignoring the information altogether or ending the interview can miss important clues. So you use the information available, continue to reassess, and treat the patient as needed while you refine the history as the situation allows.

In emergency care, you can’t let potentially incorrect or unreliable patient answers halt treatment. The priority is to address life threats and active medical problems based on the current clinical picture. You gather what you can from the patient’s history and background, but you proceed with a systematic assessment and immediate management of problems as they present. Verifying every answer would waste precious time, and ignoring the information altogether or ending the interview can miss important clues. So you use the information available, continue to reassess, and treat the patient as needed while you refine the history as the situation allows.