Taking the social history is an important part of our assessments in palliative care, as we need to know the people that we are dealing with in order to be able to help them to the best of our abilities.

One of my favourite questions to ask couples is, how did you first meet each other?

The replies are always interesting and take people back to exciting times. Transporting them to when they first fell in love.

Examples of answers include:

“I was working in the islands and she was the beautiful girl on the bicycle who caught my eye. I just had to find out who she was. We’ve now been married for 52 years and have four children, 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”