Well-focused questions have several characteristics:
Well-focused questions are precise.
Well-focused questions ask for useful information.
Well-focused questions can be answered with meaningful information.
Well-focused questions encourage inquiry and research.
And of course, well-focused questions have to be questions.
Imagine the situation where you have a 52 year old woman with intermittent shortness of breath and rare chest pain with exertion. You are concerned that her symptoms are from coronary heart disease. An example of a well-focused question: "Is stress echocardiogram the most cost-effective method to diagnose coronary artery disease in patients with a moderate risk of having a significant stenosis?"
Many questions that doctors ask are not well-focused.
One example is when someone states an opinion and then asks for confirmation of the opinion: I think stress echocardiogram is the best method to diagnose coronary artery disease. What do you think? This is not a request for information but a request for help or support. Thus, this is not a well-focused question.
Another example is a question that is not answerable with data: Why does this person not take his antihypertensive medication? At best, this question can be answered by a suggestion about how someone could go about answering this question.
A last example of a poorly-focused question is one that is not precise: What medication is best to treat coronary artery disease? There are many ways to answer this because the criterion for selection of the treatment outcome (cheapest, safest, most effective, most cost-effective) has not been identified.
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