Let's get back to basic! - AMPLE

For every emergency situation, besides stabilizing the patient and asking for help, history taking is one of the most important thing to do. Basically, there are 4 things, arranged to be a mnemonic, to be asked to the patients or to the family:

AMPLE

A - Allergies

History of patient's allergy mostly determine the possibility of the cause and the option of treatments. Allergies may include drug allergies, food allergies, and possibly the environmental cause. The information about how long and how often the symptoms surfaced might not be really important.

M - Medication

Knowing what kind of drugs the patient take may have shorten the time to determine the disease of the patients and whether taking the drugs may cause present symptoms or not taking it might trigger the symptoms. 

The knowledge of the usual drugs the patient take may give us precaution on how to treat the patient especially the one with altered mental status - unable to give adequate information. For example, when patient taking a blood thinner (warfarin, etc), we may need to be more careful handling the blood taking. Knowing the patient take anti-depression drug may also give us insight on how to approach the patient and the possibility of drug overdose or toxicity (tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) toxicity).

P - Past Medical History

Past illness event might have a sequel for the present symptom. Knowing brief and important history of patient's past medical history may either rule in or rule out differential diagnosis. For example, a past medical history of deep vein thrombosis in a dyspnea patient will increase the suspicion towards pulmonary embolism.

L - Last meal

Last meal or oral intake may take significant role, in case the patient need some procedure to be done. Let's say the patient is needing a tube (endotracheal tube). While doing an intubation, rapid sequence induction (RSI) with sellick maneuver (cricoid pressure) may be done, if the patient had full-stomach, to prevent aspiration. Although, practicing sellick maneuver may still be a debate on its efficacy in protecting the airway from aspiration.

E - Event

Knowing what happened or how did it happen is as important as the other component of AMPLE, in fact, it may summarize things up from scattered information collected in A-M-P-L to be matched to the story of the patient, especially from the last period of his/her healthy condition.