In neurology history is the most important component to making a clinical diagnosis which helps the neurologist make sense of the clinical findings and advices the investigations that need to be done to confirm the clinical diagnosis.

As a person in need of a neurological consultation the following pointers are important in the history you give the neurologist, these are basic and depending on the symptom a neurologist will likely ask more:

• What are your symptoms?
• Where are your symptoms?
• When did they start?
• How did they start?
• What makes them better or worse?
• Is it the first time you experience them or not?
• Are they getting better or worse with or without some sort of intervention?
• Is there a family history of symptoms you are experiencing?
• How are the symptoms impacting your activities of daily living?
• Also pay attention on any changes of other systems that occur with your symptoms like any skin changes, visual symptoms, urinary or bowel symptoms, any swallowing difficulties or voice changes to list a few.

Example

If pain for example is the symptom, you need to be able to describe

• Where is the pain?
• When did it start?
• What kind of pain is it, i.e. how does it feel like?
• What is the severity out of 10, 10 being severe?
• What makes it worse or better?
• How long does it last for?
• Is it constant or intermittent (comes and goes)?
• Does it spread to other regions of the body or not?
• How does movement, coughing, straining affect the pain?
• Have you experienced this kind of pain before or not?
• How does it affect your activities of daily living?
• Are you exposed to any environmental or ingestible toxins?

Try to describe your symptoms how you feel them and avoid where possible describing what google might have suggested or another medical professional’s diagnosis who might have referred you to the neurologist. This helps a neurologist to eliminate bias or presumptions.