Through June I was able to meet one of her colleagues from Boston's Children's Hospital. Mary works in the inpatient cardiology unit and interestingly, enough gave me yet another perspective on Child Life. It was obvious from the start of the interview that Mary really knew her craft! When asked the very first question about her definition of Child Life, she was able to provide a whole range of information about Child Life in her answer, she was a wealth of information and knowledge. Talking to her was very interesting as I got to learn some more of the ins and outs of child life specialists and their work.
After going back and watching the four interviews I can honestly say that my interview with Mary made me very uncomfortable. When I interviewed Rachel, June, and Shayla, I had a very strong connection with them - a connection that made it very easy to share information and stories about the field of child life. However I felt as though Mary was more about the information and facts rather than telling me stories and the personal emotions felt by a child life worker.
I am married to a math man - a guy who can spit out facts, numbers, and information at the drop of a hat. However I am the complete opposite - I prefer listening, talking, and connecting with people. It was another preconceived notion of mine that child life specialists would easily connect to just about anyone and use words and stories to make children and families feel more at ease. It was very interesting that she did not provide the stories that my other interviews did, she, like my husband kept to just the facts.
After looking over my notes and listening to the interview one more time I realized that although I felt very uncomfortable in my interview with Mary, I got a lot of information for her. However, while relistening to our conversation I kept thinking how different my own hospital stay was to the work that she does with her patients. I wonder if that is a part of why I was so uncomfortable, maybe I was not able to connect because that is not how it was for me.
Mary talks about "Preparing the patient before the procedure, letting them know what to expect, what the procedure it going to feel like, what they are going to see, what its going to smell like even." And I cannot remember this ever happening for me, I don't remember a whole heck of a lot of my hospital stay besides what has been told to me, so maybe it did happen but I do not remember it.
I would have enjoyed this interview more if Mary had given me some examples of how she and her team prepare the patients for procedures. Do they just talk to the patient and families or do they bring them into the operating rooms before hand and show them the medical equipment they are going to have around them? Do they work with the doctors and nurses to introduce them to the children ahead of the procedure so they become familiar? What tools or techniques does she like to use most when preparing the patients? In reality as I look back I wish I had asked more clarifying questions during the interview to get some of those questions answered. Personally, I am a talker and when asked about something I am passional about I tend to just talk and talk, even in circles - so it may be my bias but I assume most people are the same way. So if I have to pull information out of someone on a subject I assume they are passionate about, I tend to back off thinking they might not be enjoying it. Maybe in retrospect this is why I found my interview with Mary so disheartening because I wasn't able to get them same personal information and insight as I did my other interviews.
Hi Noelle,
ReplyDeleteThis is great! Since you don't have an IRB, make sure you have this blog set to private.
Is this an ideological difference or is this something else? Is there a specific quote from the interview that made you uncomfortable that you could put in this blog and then talk about why it made you uncomfortable/how you are making meaning of it?
ReplyDeleteThis quote from Mary is really helpful. She seems focused on "preparing the patient" for all the different experiences, contexts, and procedures they may encounter. You say this quote makes you uncomfortable, and you were expecting maybe something else. It's not clear to me what you were expecting -- it would help me understand if you explored your discomfort here, and talked about what you were expecting or maybe another way that a participant approached this topic.
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