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"Taking a comprehensive social history is time-consuming. It's easy to dismiss the task as outside the doctor's purview, especially when there's precious little time to get through a sea of investigations and treatment options. But every patient is a person, and illness occurs in the context of multifaceted lives. We need to listen to our patients with the recognition that the most important information they can give us about their illness often lies in the folds of their social circumstances. And it's our obligation to tailor our prescriptions to an illness in its full context."