Good diagnosis takes persistent questioning and good analytical skills. It's a bit like a detective piecing together a puzzle from seemingly unrelated bits of information.
So argues Dr. Hillel Finestone, a rehabilitation specialist who has treated countless numbers of patients complaining of pain-related problems, be it a backache or neck pain. The associate professor at the division of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Ottawa says he needs to know about a patient's personal life in depth to really get to the bottom of the problems, and that includes information about family relationships or even a patient's sexual orientation.
Finestone, also director of stroke rehabilitation research at Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital in Ottawa, was in Japan late last month at the request of the faculty of rehabilitation medicine at Showa University School of Medicine, where he gave a talk to physicians and spent a day training resident doctors.