This wasn’t how she’d been taught in medical school. As a medical student, she’d been shown how to follow a checklist to get the life history of a new patient. She’d spend forty-five minutes asking questions and yet scarcely touch on the patient’s social relationships. Communicable disease required a different approach. “It’s one person spreading it to another person,” said Charity. “It’s not what you ate or smoked or something you did with yourself. It’s something you have to get from another person. It’s ‘Who lives with you in your home?’ It’s ‘What kind of sex do you have and how often?’
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The Power of Social History in Medicine
