Showing papers in "The Qualitative Report in 2011"

How to Conduct Clinical Qualitative Research on the Patient's Experience

Abstract: From a perspective of patient-centered healthcare, exploring patients’ (a) preconceptions, (b) treatment experiences, (c) quality of life, (d) satisfaction, (e) illness understandings, and (f) design are all critical components in improving primary health care and research. Utilizing qualitative approaches to discover patients’ experiences can provide valuable information for practitioners and investigators alike. In this paper, the author describes how researchers can select from among five major qualitative designs (i.e., primary qualitative research, qualitative evaluation, collaborative inquiry, mixed method, and qualitative metastudy) and five preeminent qualitative methodologies (i.e., descriptive, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and narrative) to create studies to meet their patient-centered research needs. Key Words: Patient Experience, Qualitative Research, Research Design, Patient-Centered Healthcare In patient-centered healthcare (Stewart, Brown, Weston, McWhinney, McWilliam, & Freeman, 2003) the goal of treatment is to produce the most effective outcomes based upon the integration of “the conventional understanding of disease with each patient’s unique experience of illness” (Weston & Brown, 1995, p. 23). In this clinical approach researchers from biomedical and psychosocial traditions work in concert to provide healthcare professionals the knowledge they need to conduct their evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence orientations (Gabbay & Le May, 2011; Heneghan & Badenoch, 2006) to treating the patient as a whole person. In this pursuit of clinical knowledge, qualitative researchers have been prominent in their contributions, as noted by McWilliam (1995). Parallels between the patient-centered method and qualitative inquiry invite the application of this type of research to investigating patientcentered care. The patient-centered method is a process of acquiring understanding of a fellow human being. Patient-centered care focuses on the patient’s disease and illness and on the patient as a whole person. In humanistic inquiry, the researcher and the research participant together strive to capture the needs, motives, and expectations of the participant to construct the interpretation of the experience. (McWilliam, p. 204) Besides taking note of this affinity of worldviews, the more effective qualitative researchers have also been pragmatic in embracing the maxim, “All research is local.” In doing so, these investigators take great care in learning how clinicians learn and focus their qualitative research studies to produce results that can inform the practice of patientcentered healthcare. The results of this conceptualization have led to the evolution of