By the way . . . Patients should record their appointments

I HAVE been asked on many occasions whether I agree to patients recording our consultations.

This has never worried me, and I readily accept — but I can see how some doctors might be upset at being recorded, perhaps a little defensively, fearing that anything they have said that might be slightly inaccurate, or even verging on politically incorrect, might later emerge as a complaint.

I was recently reading about the work of Irvin Yalom (author of Love’s Executioner And Other Tales Of Psychotherapy), a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in California, and found a revelation: ‘...Years ago, I conducted an experiment in which a patient and I each wrote our own review of each of our therapy hours.

‘Later, when we compared them, it was at times difficult to believe that what we described was the same hour. Even our views of what was helpful varied.’

None of what he says is a surprise to me. These observations must apply in our everyday practice, too. And now, with modern mobile phone technology, recording a voice file is easy.

Conversations with the doctor can be retained for future reference, the patient thus enabled to recall both sides of the discussion.

I cannot see that this is anything other than valuable and, as doctors, we should all get used to it. Rather than being resistant, perhaps we should be encouraging our patients to keep such records.