on the theme of "patients lie"

A book I clearly need to read!

I had a lovely older lady the other day. She was slightly confused but I was able to get her to answer direct questions if I tried a few times. During the personal history I asked her how many children she has, what ages, where they live etc. She told me she has 11 children, told me all their names, where they live, what they're doing.

I picked up her chart late. She has. . . three children.

Hmmm.

In an even better example, my friend S was interviewing a fascinating middle aged man who was admitted for knee pain. He spoke in elaborate detail about his service as a high-ranking official in the Russian army, including his experience serving in Afghanistan, during which time he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for five years. She spoke to him about this for nearly two hours, thinking maybe he'd sustained a relevant injury, or PTSD, something like that.

When she returned to the doctors' lounge and looked at his file, she was mildly confused. His personal history mentioned nothing about his military service, no mention of malnutrition, broken bones. Nothing.

Then she flipped the page to "medical history." His medical history: "Sociopath. Long history of manipulation of hospital personnel, pathological lying."

The doctors almost fell over laughing when S presented the history she had collected from him.