The Calgary-Cambridge Guide to the Medical Interview - Gathering Information on the Biomedical History

Information gathering involves the collection of clinically relevant facts and history, in combination with the exploration of patient experience, concerns and ideas regarding their condition (Kaufman, 2008). It is therefore important to follow a biopsychosocial approach throughout the medical interview: different patients may have similar sets of biomedical information, but each individual clinical presentation will be greatly influenced by the psychosocial background of the patient. The aim of information gathering is to gain enough clinical data to be able to form a hypothesis of potential cause of symptoms, and to test the hypothesis to reach a diagnosis. In this document, the gathering of biomedical information will be investigated, underpinned by a functional and psychosocial consideration. Clinical reasoning and hypothesis generation as a product of information gathered during the medical interview, will firstly be discussed.