Closed questions that are necessary

CLOSED QUESTIONS that are necessary in certain situations during a medical consultation to obtain specific information quickly and efficiently. While open questions are great for exploring a patient’s concerns, closed questions can help clarify details and gather essential facts. Here’s when they are most useful:

1. **Confirming Specific Details**: After gathering a broad understanding through open questions, closed questions help clarify precise details. For example, “Does the pain occur only in the morning?” or “Have you had a fever?”
2. **Focusing the Conversation**: If a patient is providing too much irrelevant information, closed questions can help bring the conversation back on track. For example, “Have you experienced any dizziness?”
3. **Assessing Yes/No Responses**: When checking for the presence or absence of specific symptoms, closed questions are vital. For instance, “Are you allergic to any medications?” or “Do you have a family history of diabetes?”
4. **Urgent Situations**: In emergency or time-sensitive scenarios, closed questions allow a doctor to obtain critical information quickly. For example, “Are you having chest pain?” or “Have you lost consciousness?”
5. **Medication and Treatment Adherence**: Closed questions can help assess whether patients are following prescribed treatments. For example, “Are you taking your medication daily?”
6. **Reviewing Systems or Checklist Items**: When reviewing a patient’s history or conducting a physical exam, doctors often ask a series of closed questions to ensure nothing is missed, such as “Any recent changes in weight?” or “Do you smoke?”

While closed questions are necessary for precision, balancing them with open-ended ones ensures the patient feels heard and fully engaged.

All the above would be meaningless if the doctor in the speaking subtext of OET, while doing the two play role doesn’t show empathy.

Showing empathy while communicating with a patient is crucial for several reasons, as it directly impacts the quality of care and the overall patient experience. Here’s why it’s important:

1. **Builds Trust and Rapport**: When a doctor shows empathy, it helps establish a trusting relationship. Patients are more likely to open up about their concerns and feel comfortable discussing sensitive issues when they sense that their doctor truly cares about them.
2. **Improves Patient Satisfaction**: Empathy makes patients feel heard, respected, and understood, leading to greater satisfaction with their care. Feeling emotionally supported enhances the overall healthcare experience, which is especially important when patients are dealing with stress or illness.
3. **Enhances Communication**: By showing empathy, doctors encourage patients to share more details about their symptoms, emotions, and personal circumstances, which can lead to better diagnosis and treatment. Patients are more forthcoming when they feel their concerns are taken seriously.
4. **Reduces Patient Anxiety**: Healthcare settings can be intimidating, and patients often feel vulnerable. Empathy helps alleviate their fears and anxiety, creating a safer, more comfortable environment for them to express their worries.
5. **Promotes Better Health Outcomes**: Empathy has been linked to better adherence to treatment plans. When patients feel that their doctor genuinely understands their needs and concerns, they are more likely to follow through with recommendations, leading to improved health outcomes.
6. **Supports Mental and Emotional Well-being**: Patients, especially those dealing with chronic or life-threatening conditions, often experience emotional distress. Empathy shows that the doctor recognizes their emotional as well as physical struggles, helping to improve the patient’s emotional resilience.
7. **Fosters a Collaborative Relationship**: Empathy encourages a patient-centered approach, where the doctor and patient work together to find the best solutions. This collaborative relationship empowers patients to take an active role in their care.

Ultimately, empathy is essential because it humanizes healthcare, ensuring that patients are treated not just as medical cases but as individuals with unique feelings, concerns, and needs.

In this subtest, the candidate will have 3 minutes of preparation for each role play… During this time, they can ask any questions about the card:

• –  Vocabularies that they don’t understand
• –  About pronunciation of words…

In each card you will find:

1. The candidate card number
2. The Setting: if you are in a suburban medical clinic or in an emergency room and they

will tell you your role: A doctor seeing a patient for a specific reason like a surgical

emergency trauma, or a medical one like diabetes or congestive heart failure

1. Task: FIDEO:

F: Find out the symptoms
E: Explore the lifestyle (Exercise, Diet, Alcoholism, Drugs, Sexual habits…)

D: Discuss possible meanings of signs and symptoms, show empathy, reassure, ask questions

E:Explain how the possible disease can be managed by persuading the patient to be a team member and a co-designer of his or her health plan.

O:Outline the next steps to possible diagnosis and treatment of the pathology… biological tests, imaging, treatment options, follow up visits…