Three Out Of Four | Scott Alexander | Slate Star Codex | 12th July 2016

Lessons learned as a third-year hospital resident in psychiatry. “Patients are really suggestible. If you just ask specific questions like ‘Are you depressed?’ then they’ll say ‘Yes’ to make you happy. So instead, the patient says something like ‘I’m sitting in a pool of blood’. And I say. ‘Tell me more’. They say ‘Well, it’s my blood’. I say ‘Tell me more’. After repeating this process a couple of times, we finally get to the stabbing, and the patient doesn’t feel like I railroaded over their chance to tell their story”