Conducting Adult Health History - Essay Example

"Conducting Adult Health History" is a great example of a paper on the health system. The interview that I conducted was an Adult Health History interview and this interviewing session gave me a lot of experience and knowledge about interviewing. I obtained biographical as well as physical information from the interviewee. I did the interview in an open environment as the interviewee and I sat on the balcony of his two-bedroom unit. His wife and dog accompanied us. It was a sunny warm weekend and I can smell the fragrance of flowers. His wife and the dog can be considered as interruptions; however, they tried less to participate. Our sitting arrangement was on comfortable chairs and both of us, the interviewee and me were dressed in informal dressing. Overall, the interview was conducted in a friendly environment as I tried not to ask any irrelevant and unnecessary questions most of the time.

I already informed the interviewee about the Health History interview, so I do not have to introduce it again. I asked open-ended questions in order to make him feel comfortable. Open-ended questions usually give enough space to the interview as he can express himself easily, however, close-ended questions restrict the interviewees and they feel somewhat restricted in answering questions as per the interviewer’s choice (Seidman, 1998). Therefore, to make the interview more friendly and for gaining maximum information, I asked open-ended questions. For example, I asked him about the most challenging physical problems that he faced and he was quite vocal in answering.

The interview lasted for an hour and thirty minutes, which is quite enough time for getting the required information. As far as note-taking is concerned, I did very little writing as I had already prepared a form for HPI, due to which, I was only required to make checkmarks. However, there was also information that was required to be put in form of detailed data, so I also wrote some of the answers.

There are various techniques that are used while interviewing for trapping the interviewee such as I made his wide to leave the room by asking her for a glass of water so that I can ask the interviewee about his sexual habits. In the lieu of unwanted advice, I informed the interviewee to make use of Viagra in order to increase his sexual potency as sexual ability somewhat declines with increasing age. Kvale (1996) informs that the interview questions should be simple, the language that is used should be easy to comprehend and there should be no jargon used. By mistake, I used some of the professional jargon that made the interviewee somewhat perplexed due to which, I felt that I should not use them in the future as complicated or jargonized language is disturbing for interviewees.

Nonverbal behavior is of importance in an interview, as the interviewer and interviewee, both show some nonverbal expressions that do not need words (Kvale, 1996). I try to make eye contact with the interviewee. In addition, I do not show him that I am overly surprised by his information. I made him feel relaxed with the interview session most of the time. When he got perplexed because of my usage of jargon, his facial expressions showed my nervousness and I tried to explain the words in simple language. Therefore, for future interviews, I believe that I should not ask irrelevant questions, should not give unwanted advice, and should not use jargonized language.

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