Promoting the art of history taking.

The patient history is a vital piece of the physician-patient encounter and helps lead to the final diagnosis about 75% of the time. Skilled history taking is reported to be declining among medical trainees and many educators believe current educational methods do not emphasize these skills during medical school training. Current assessment methods, including the OSCE (objective structured clinical exam), may not be testing history-taking skills comprehensively. There are simple and practical approaches to emphasize the importance of history taking in clinical teaching.