You are required to conduct an interview about chronic illness by using the following open-ended questions.
1. What knowledge did you have about your condition before you were diagnosed?
2. How was your experience with your physician?
If necessary : a) What were your expectations when being seen by your doctor?
b) Were you transferred to a specialist once you were diagnosed?
c) How did you feel about both providers and how did experiences with them differ?
d) How long did they take to give you a diagnose?
3. Were you ever presented with different options for treatment or management of your condition and given any choices? What influenced your decision to pursue the treatment plan that you did? Did you feel providers were ever resistant to your desires?
4. What are some of the biggest challenges of living with …. (the specific chronic illness)? what is the worst thing about (the illness)?
5. How are you coping with the side effects or pain? Did you have a personal philosophy that has helped you cope with having a chronic illness? How has this changed since you were initially diagnosed?
6. What advice would you give people who have recently been diagnosed with your condition?
You are required to conduct your interviews individually. To receive full credit for the interview:
– You must turn in an audible digital recording of the interview, which you have made on a digital recording device such as your smartphone or ipod.
– The interview must be at least 20 minutes long and the Interview Recording must be submitted at the end of Week 6.
– You are required to write an Interview Report (5 pages). The report must contain the following sections to receive full credit:
1. Interview Plan and Research Questions (1 page), explicating the rationale behind the questions you have chosen to explore in the interview.
2. Access to the Respondent (0.5 page), explaining how you approached the interviewee and why you chose to interview him or her; also, disclose here if you had contact to this person in the past.
3. Biographical Background of the Respondent (brief, only if available or appropriate)
4. Summary of the Interview (1 page), giving an overview of all the answers given by the respondent.
5. Discussion (1-2 pages), discussing one (or more) episode(s) of the interview in greater detail by applying concepts you have learned in this course, making references to the pertinent reading assignments and/or incorporating additional literature. Identify new questions that you are left with as a result of the interview.
6. Personal Reflection (1 page), in which you discuss how your personal preconceptions have been challenged by the respondent’s personal account; also, here discuss possible new questions the respondent’s answers have left you with; moreover, you are welcome to discuss other impressions concerning the content of the respondent’s answers as well as the interview experience as a whole in this last section.
