Ever sat in a doctor’s surgery and wondered what your GP is actually getting at with some of their questions?
Most of us feel a bit daft admitting we’ve been looking up our symptoms online the night before, fully expecting a sharp sigh and a lecture about staying away from the internet. However, one GP recently revealed a question he puts to almost every patient who walks in, specifically about what they searched for before turning up. It isn’t to mock anyone or prove a point; it completely changes the conversation from the word go.
GP appointments don’t always lead to easy answers.
Visiting the GP with a health concern doesn’t always lead to a quick or straightforward diagnosis. Symptoms can be tricky to pin down, and sometimes get mistaken for something else entirely. A single appointment often has to cover an awful lot of ground, working out what’s actually wrong, ruling out other possibilities, and figuring out what matters most to the person sitting in front of them, all within a fairly tight window of time.
One GP has been sharing some of the techniques used to get to the bottom of what’s actually worrying patients, and it turns out asking about Google plays a bigger role than you might expect.
The Google question that gets asked is a thought-provoking one.
Speaking publicly about the approach, the doctor explained that as part of taking a patient’s history, it’s worth sometimes directly asking whether they’ve searched their symptoms online, and whether there’s anything specific worrying them as a result. It’s a simple question, but one that opens up a conversation many patients might otherwise feel a bit sheepish about starting themselves.
What doctors are really trying to find out by asking this question
The reasoning behind the question is figuring out if there’s something particular the patient wants addressed head on, something they’re concerned might be causing their symptoms, or even a specific diagnosis they’ve already got in mind after searching online. Asking this directly helps build a much clearer picture of what’s actually on the patient’s mind before the consultation goes any further.
This approach allows a doctor to focus the appointment on the things they’re professionally concerned about, while also making sure they’re addressing whatever the patient themselves is worried about too. Without asking questions like what someone thinks is going on, what’s worrying them, or what they’re hoping to get out of the appointment, there’s a real risk that a doctor’s own focus could end up completely disconnected from what the patient actually came in wanting answered.
Skipping this question can leave patients feeling unheard.
When a doctor’s focus and a patient’s concerns don’t line up, patients often end up feeling dismissed or unheard, even if the doctor hasn’t actually missed anything medically important along the way. That disconnect can damage the trust between a patient and their GP, even when the clinical care itself was perfectly sound.
Even if an individual patient hasn’t personally Googled their symptoms, plenty of other patients regularly do, so factoring that possibility into how a history gets taken has simply become a normal, built-in part of many GPs’ approach to consultations.
Why GPs sometimes ask questions that feel obvious
A related frustration many patients have is GPs asking questions that seemingly could be answered just by looking through existing medical records. This can feel dismissive, as though basic groundwork hasn’t been done before the appointment even started. In reality, this situation is often just as frustrating for doctors as it is for patients, and can feel like a letdown on both sides of the conversation when it happens.
Sadly, time pressure is usually the real reason.
The core issue generally comes down to time. Standard ten-minute appointment slots rarely leave GPs enough time to review a patient’s entire file beforehand, leaving only a narrow window to actually speak with the patient, listen to their concerns, and put together a proper treatment plan on the spot.
In real terms, that often works out to roughly six or seven minutes of actual consultation time at most, once everything else involved in an appointment is accounted for. That’s a strikingly small window to build trust, gather information, and reach a sensible plan all at once.
Patients should be glad that questions like this are being asked.
When a doctor asks something that’s technically already sitting in a patient’s medical record, it’s rarely because they don’t care. More often, it’s because they simply haven’t had the time to read through everything beforehand, or because they want to hear the situation described in the patient’s own words rather than relying purely on notes written by someone else.
Within a system under this much time pressure, it’s not always realistic to thoroughly review every patient’s full history before a consultation begins. While it’s a fair question for a patient to ask, particularly if their GP doesn’t know them especially well, most doctors wish they had more time available to spend with each and every patient who comes through the door.
