Book excerpt: The Medical Interview by Drs. Steven A. Cole and Julian Bird equips you to communicate effectively with your patients so you can provide optimal care! This best-selling, widely adopted resource presents a practical, systematic approach to honing your basic interviewing skills and managing common challenging communicating situations. Its Three-Function Approach – "Build the Relationship," "Assess and Understand," and Collaborative Management" offers straightforward tasks, behaviors, and skills that can be easily mastered, making this an ideal learning tool for beginners and a valuable reference for experienced healthcare professionals. - Effectively meet a full range of communication challenges including language and cultural barriers, sexual issues, elderly patients, breaking bad news, and non-adherence. - Easily apply proven techniques with help from supportive case examples and actual interview questions. - Get the skills you need now with new chapters covering advanced topics and applications including "Presentation and Documentation," nonverbal communication, using psychological principles in medical practice, and integrating structure and function. - Quickly review information with summary tables, boxes and bulleted lists. - Get access on the go with the fully searchable text online at Student Consult, including cost-free access to a specially customized, interactive web-based Module on Brief Action Planning (BAP), a key component of the web-based, interactive Comprehensive Motivational Interventions (CMI)TM e-learning platform.