Clinical Problem Solving Series Strategies of Information Gathering

EDITORS' PREFACE Our goal in this exercise is to consider a neglected aspect of diagnostic problem solving, namely the strategies that physicians use to gather data as they confront a diagnostic dilemma. In the first part, we will analyze the rationale for individual questions and for the sequence of questions that a general internist used when taking the history from a previously ill physician. In the second part, we will review some of the studies that bear on the experimental approach to information gathering.