INTAKE

I haven’t had a GP since 1998. I was recently given the opportunity to apply for a rare patient spot at a local health centre. Though I have no medical concerns, I was glad to finally have someone I could see should something come up. And then I received the patient intake application form.

It’s hard to describe the lunacy that is this form. As you read the following, please appreciate that this is the intake form for a health centre populated by four doctors and a team of nurse practitioners and likely a whole staff of office workers. These folks are not just serious professionals who are as educated as can be, with even someone answering the phone likely having a degree these days. And they're all doing important work where communication is critical, little details matter, and getting things right can be about life and death, or at least alleviating or prolonging suffering.

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The first thing that jumped out to me, aside from being four pages long, was the numbering of the questions (or sections, or something...) They go like this: 

1., 2.1., 3.2., 4.3., 5.4. 6., 7.6., 8.7., 9.8., 10.9., 11.10., 12.,13., 14.11., 15., 16.12., 17., 18.13., 19., 20., 21., 22. 

Zoinks! That's kinda hard to miss and sort of a rough start, I hope you’ll agree.

Section 1 (not a question) does that classic and needless formatting seemingly found on almost all forms. In this case, the space given for first name, middle initial, and last name are all the same length, as though names can only be ten letters long and a middle initial or three require six centimetres of their own. You’ve seen it many times. Classic.

In the same row as the names, the form asks for my date of birth. And it provides the same amount of space for that as the names. On the next line below, providing a blank space of half a page to answer, it then asks for my age. Wow. That’s a lot for me to take in. They want to know my date of birth and my age? And I can compose a short sentence about it? What kind of answers do they get, I wonder? Is this like a well-made multiple choice test, involving several questions seeking the same demonstration of knowledge (only they put the questions next to one another, rather than staggering them throughout the quiz?) Who can say? What I do know is I'm already very concerned about the patients at this clinic and am seriously considering not filling out the form.

The next space on that line is titled “PHN”. (Some might think this stands for "personal health number" but there is no reason to believe it is. There's half a page to type out what info they're after. Why abbreviate it ask for it here?) It’s as if the composer felt that with half a page to work with they were tight for space and had to remove (just two) letters to abbreviate the word “Phone”. Curiously, they didn't go with an even more parsimonious "P#". Uncovering why they put what they did in all caps is an endeavour for someone far braver than myself.

The following row is for my address details. But, vexingly, rather than asking for my province or postal code it asks for my state and zip code. Wild. And the last row in this section has the page divided in half for spaces to input “Mobile Phone” and “Email”. They didn’t abbreviate anything, of course, and these space come two rows below the “PHN” line, just to keep with the rational consistency of the whole thing.

Skipping items 2.1. through 5.4. Which are mostly fine aside from missing punctuation. (After all, who needs a question mark)

Question six is pretty great. The question is: “Do you have the following conditions.” And what follows is a five row, three column chart. Each cell in the far right column being filled with the response “No” and each cell in the middle column filled with the response “Yes” for you to circle in response to the conditions they’ve provided in the far left column. What is in the first cell in the top left corner of the chart? Nothing. It’s blank. …for real.

* Blank *  |  Yes  |  No  |

What? Following the void, item two is “Fatigue or Chronic fatigue syndrome” which is fine; except that, unlike all the following items in the chart, “Fibromyalgia”, “Chronic migraine”, “Chronic pain”, it’s not justified to the left but is arbitrarily

three spaces from the left margin. I’d love to know how this was even made. And then I’d love to know how it wasn’t noticed. And then I’d love to know how it wasn’t fixed, which would take roughly nine seconds (if you had chronic pain, migraine, and were suffering severe fatigue.)

Aside from missing punctuation, questions 7.6. through 10.9. are fine and ask about allergies, medications, and previous surgeries. Great.

What I like about 11.10. is that it asks for my vaccine history (no punctuation). It doesn’t ask for recent vaccine history, or relevant history, and gives just a couple of lines to answer. I don’t know about you but I’ve had 1,016.0469088 kg (a ton) of vaccinations. I'd need a whole page if they wanted to know the illness the immunization was for, the vaccine name, the date and the dates of any boosters. Measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, cholera, typhus, typhoid, rabies, flu, pneumococcal, meningitis, hepatitis A and B, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, and COVID-19 are the one's off the top of my head. And some of those I've had a bunch of times and with different vaccines. Only a few of those are more exotic, typically for folks who’ve been to remote or less developed equatorial regions, so most people filling out this form would have most of the above shots or oral doses. 

Question 12 is solid: “Please indicate what line of work you do, if you are working as part of your occupational history[.]”

The rest of the questions are all missing or including random punctuation. Some have periods or question marks while others do not, and seemingly without any rhyme or reason.

What’s really great is how at the end, after question 20, there’s a long consent section requiring four separate signatures — and then following those are questions 21 and 22 which, of course, are blank. There are numbers, no questions, and a whole page of lined space for a response. And that's really the perfect way to complete their patient intake adventure.

* Chef's kiss *