"What's your approach to medical condition]?" is a common question that preceptors will ask their learners. We are checking on how they approach a problem and break it down into manageable steps.
Medical learners, especially early in their training, spend extra time taking a history because they feel they have to collect every single piece of information. My tip for them is to center their questions around their differential diagnosis, that is, the potential causes for the presenting complaint.
Yet, they have to hold those possibilities in their minds while being in conversation with an actual human being. In those moments, they are no longer working from a textbook (or a computer screen!) - they have to respond to the questions and intonations and pauses of their patients.
Perhaps the above phrasing is a bit cheesy (I prefer poetic!), but these threads come together during each teaching session. Move with intention and also be personable.
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