Please interview a family friend or relative outside your immediate family (i.e., not parents and siblings) who has experience with nurses, clinical care, and/or medical settings. Your interviewee should be of legal age (18 or older) and should be fully aware of the purpose of the interview and the fact that it is a course assignment. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles are great candidates for an interview. Interviewing classmates or close friends may not yield particularly interesting or fruitful results.

The purpose is for you to try out some of your interview skills as discussed in Coulehan and Block (2001) and Bickley & Szilagyi (2003) (e.g., such as active listening, empathy, open invitations, and prompts). It is best to conduct the interview face to face, but a phone interview is acceptable. Please avoid email interviews.

Please ask questions related to each of the following areas. Remember to ask open-ended questions, avoiding “yes or no” questions. Before the interview, you should brainstorm a few questions under each area. For example, for #1 in the areas below, good questions might include “Describe your eating habits,” “How often do you exercise,” and “Tell me how you know you are sick.”

1. How does the interviewee describe their overall health?
2. How has experiences with clinical care impacted the interviewee’s life/quality of life?
3. How does the interviewee define “health”?
4. What is the interviewee’s present experience with clinical care?
5. What have been some of the interviewee’s meaningful (positive or negative) interactions with nurses and doctors?

Please remember to begin the interview explaining the format of the interview and end the interview by thanking the individual for their time. The interview should be between 15 and 30 minutes long. Please take some notes during the interview so that you can objectively report on the exchange. If you have a smartphone, using your audio recorder might be helpful so that you can listen to your interview again, but make sure that you have been granted permission by your interviewee.

The Health History and Clinical Care Perspectives Narrative

As you write your narrative, remember to let the interviewee’s words inform the story rather than your judgements of their words. Your narrative should include the following four sections, as first-level headings. Notice that section 2 (interview findings) and section 3 (significance) should have level two headings as well. There is a sample Clinical Care Perspectives Narrative located in this module.

1. Interview Setting: Please describe who you interviewed, why you selected this person, how you set up the interview, where the it took place, how long it took, and other relevant information you feel is required to understand the setting of this interview. Please DO NOT provide identifying information (e.g., name, address, social security numbers, etc.).
2. Interview Findings: Please briefly describe one element of this experience that interested you. Pick something that interested, surprised, or puzzled you. What was your reaction (thoughts, feelings, or concerns)? There are no right or wrong answers.
   1. How does the interviewee describe their overall health?
   2. How have experiences with clinical care impacted the interviewee’s life/quality of life?
   3. How does the interviewee define “health”?
   4. What is the interviewee’s present experience with clinical care?
   5. What have been some of the interviewee’s meaningful (positive or negative) interactions with nurses and doctors?
3. Significance: How did this interview change (or not) your thoughts or feelings about patient perspectives of clinical care? Here are a few questions to help you answer the previous question:
   1. What assumptions had you made about patients’ and their perspectives on clinical care?
   2. How do your experiences shape your understanding of the patient experience?
   3. How was this interviewee’s experience important for them?
4. Future Application: What new insights did you gain for future patient interactions? How could you apply those insights as both a student and a nurse?