Communication is a skill that the nurse needs to have in their toolbox. The ability to connect to the patient establishes a great nurse-patient bond. This bond builds the foundation of comfort and trust when performing bedside procedures, assessing, and interviewing the patient.
Open-ended Question
The open-ended question is asking the patient to devolve information about themselves or the situation that brought them to the clinic or hospital. An example includes, “What brought you in today?”. Open-ended questions give the patient an open area to state what brought them in and prompts them to recall the events or symptoms. An open-ended question does not lead the patient to say a one or two-word answer. If you are trying to get a general explanation and the patient is only answering in one or two sentences, try to ask the question in more general terms. There is the occasional patient that doesn’t like to talk, and these patients will require slightly more prompting to get to the bottom of what brought them in. This technique used when first meeting the patient, or beginning the interview process and when evaluating feelings, thoughts, and coping mechanisms.
Closed-ended Questions
On the other hand, the closed-ended question is a method to get specific information about a person, symptom, or situation. This question phrased like, “Were you nauseated after you ate lunch?”. This question is more precise in the answer; most times, you are looking for a yes or no, or a simple answer. Usually, you can start an assessment with an open-ended question, and as the information is given, more focused questions can clarify the information. There are some patients when you ask them an item that answered either yes or no, and they tend to explain the answer instead of answering. Stay polite, and redirect them, if a convoluted or grey answer is explored reword the response to make sure they understood the answer correctly. This technique, when using a focused question, is about retrieving the critical information and clarifying that you know the patient.
Utilizing this tool and understanding when to use one versus the other will help in the interview process. Have you encountered a patient that was difficult to interview with too much information or not enough?
