An unticked box tells you nothing

The majority of new patient forms that I see pose medical questions in this way:

Have you ever had rheumatic fever? ◻︎

Seems good but what does it mean if the patient does not tick the box? Unfortunately it can mean either one of two things:

1. The patient has never had rheumatic fever or,

2. The patient did not read and answer the question.

Therefore, a “non-tick” is ambiguous.

I’ve seen patients fill in the top of a new patient form, skim over the medical questions in 2 seconds and then sign the bottom of the form. This is clearly unsatisfactory.

So, how should medical questions be put?

Here’s my suggestion:

Have you ever had rheumatic fever? ◻︎Y ◻︎N

Putting questions in this way demands a response. If the patient does not tick one box or the other it immediately tells you that they did not read the question.

When you put questions on the new patient form like the example above you will discover that about 20% of patients hand back the form with neither “Y” nor “N” ticked.

Whenever that happened my staff would hand the form back to them and tell them that they needed to answer each question either “Y” or “N”.

Doing this removes ambiguity. It also, in my opinion, puts you on a better footing from a medico-legal point of view.

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