Organic or Psychosomatic? Facilitating Inquiry With Children and Parents

The acquisition of clinically critical information through interviewing has been described as the art of medicine. Learning effective interviewing skills, however, requires a knowledge about the process of the clinical interview, techniques with a high probability of yielding useful information, and an awareness that surface symptoms may be the entry to the pediatrician's office but not the underlying reason for the visit. Stein et al comment how a pediatrician demonstrated these skills in the way she framed her questions and by her recognition of a potential hidden agenda.