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with the subject in an engaging and efficient manner, yielding an exceptional ratio of use- ful information per minute of conversation. Good interviewing also requires humil- ity—the ability to subordinate one's ego to the task at hand. Interviewers who make themselves the focal point of interviews— and there are many—waste both their time and their subject's time by augmenting dialog with observations and anecdotes of their own instead of with good follow-up questions. Such self-serving digressions can almost sound as if the subject were inter- viewing the interviewer! Interviewing patients in the field requires flexibility because there are two broad cat- egories of cases presenting in modern-day EMS, emergent and nonemergent, that require different intelligence-gathering approaches. In emergent scenarios with verbal patients, minute-long assessment-driven interviews are still the norm. In nonemer- gent cases, we can usually take more time to learn about the patient and the environ- ment behind the complaint, or even try to anticipate the next complaint. Let's start with similarities between emergent and nonemergent interviews. The Initial Encounter Meeting anyone for the first time should involve, at the very least, a commonsense goal of polite, non-threatening discourse. Begin by trying to put the subject at ease. When "What seems to be the problem?" wasn't working for me, I switched to "So why did you call us today?" Direct, but also a bit condescending, don't you think? Some of my patients did—at least one for sure, who looked at me with disgust and answered with as much sarcasm as his COPD would allow, "Why, do you have something better to do?" I wasn't happy with my opening until I started greeting patients the way I did almost everyone else: "How's it going?" It didn't seem to matter that an honest answer from sick people would almost always have been "Not too well." Patients seemed to value informality over precision. As important as our first words is our posture. You'll often get better information faster by making eye contact at eye level, which usually means kneeling beside a seat- ed or recumbent subject not too close and not too far away. Dr. Judith Orloff, author of Emotional Freedom, suggests an "arms- length bubble" as an "invisible border that surrounds us and sets our comfort level." Don't forget the part about eye contact. I think the biggest mistake many responders make is to approach their patients wear- ing sunglasses. Talk about condescending, particularly indoors! Next it's time for some high-frequency lis- tening—by us, not by our subjects. Remem- ber, this isn't about us. High-frequency listening means focusing on our patients and absorbing their answers, EMSWORLD.com | OCTOBER 2015 29 R E Q U E ST I N F O 866.864.9033 | medapoint.com/contact-us/advanceone EMS solutions that grow your business Fully-hosted, cloud-based EMS solutions • Improve workflow using one intuitive interface for the entire patient cycle. • Make informed, real-time decisions with unprecedented data access. • Automate manual processes so that you can focus on what matters most. • Share secured information from any device, anytime, anywhere. • Use fully-hosted, cloud-based solutions; no IT or hardware requirements. SEAMLESSLY MANAGE EACH PATIENT'S JOURNEY—FROM DISPATCH TO EPCR TO BILLING. For More Information Circle 24 on Reader Service Card