Beneficios Internos de un Sistema de Gestión de la Calidad

Semi-structured interviews were carried out by the researcher over a 16-month period between December 2014 and April 2016. Participants who had indicated in the online survey that they were willing to be interviewed were contacted by email. In the email correspondence, the researcher reminded participants of their recent involvement in the study and reiterated the aim of the interview. A participant information sheet (Appendix 10) and a copy of the consent form (Appendix 11) were included as attachments in the email. This was done to remind participants of the purpose of the study and to inform them of what the interview would entail. As discussed in Section 5.3, this aimed to ensure that participants were fully informed and also provided an additional opportunity to withdraw from the study.

The physical environment in which interviews occur is important to consider and it should be ensured that participants feel comfortable to discuss their personal experiences (Davies, 2007; King and Horrocks, 2010). Within the email correspondence, a selection of dates and times for the interview were provided, along with the option of being interviewed at their workplace, or the researcher’s base. Travel expenses were offered to participants who expressed a preference to be interviewed at the researcher’s base.

Most participants expressed a preference for the interview to be carried out within their workplace, and only four participants stated a preference to meet at the researcher’s base. Whilst participants’ own workplaces may have been a more convenient location to fit around work priorities, their own familiar surroundings may also have helped put participants at ease. Furthermore, as the rooms or areas in

77 which the interviews took place were identified and arranged by participants, they also had control over the set-up of the room in advance of the researcher arriving. Where participants indicated a preference for the interview to take place in their workplace, the researcher requested that they arrange a quiet area where they would feel comfortable to speak. In the main, participants chose their own private offices or meeting rooms; two interviews took place within a café area at the workplace at the request of participants. King and Horrocks (2010) suggest that a public area can often be a more neutral space for an interview to take place and can help with encouraging a relaxed and informal atmosphere. It is acknowledged that this setting may have not offered as much privacy as a private office or meeting room. However, it was deemed important for participants to identify a setting that they felt comfortable to discuss their own personal experiences and which contributed to establishing rapport and trust (Davies, 2007).

Prior to the start of the interview, participants were asked if they had read and understood the participant information sheet (Appendix 10) and were invited to ask any questions for clarification. A written consent form (Appendix 11) was completed by participants, and permission to audio record the interview was requested by the researcher. An audio recordable pen was used to record sound and notes made during the interviews. This was effective in picking up sound in public areas where noise levels were greater than in more private office spaces, as was the case in the two interviews which took place in café locations. It was an unobtrusive method of audio recording and possibly a less inhibiting device to use in comparison to other audio recording devices. It also provided an interesting talking point prior to the interview starting, where the researcher explained how the pen functioned. This seemed to help put participants at ease and was a helpful in setting the tone of the interview as an informal discussion.

An interview topic guide (Appendix 13) was utilised to allow a focused yet open approach to data generation, whilst ensuring that the discussion aligned to the study objectives. The researcher started off the interview by referring to the terms IPW and IPPL, and reminding participants of what these terms meant in relation to the study. As discussed in Chapter 1, previous literature has highlighted that there is often confusion related to the use of interprofessional terminology. Reminding participants of these terms and their meaning aimed to ensure that they understood

78 the focus of the questions they were asked during the interview. The researcher started off with an introductory open question:

“Tell me about where you work and what professions you usually work with” Ryan et al. (2009) suggest that the interview should begin with a question that participants would feel comfortable answering. This was felt to be an easy non- threatening question to begin the interview and one which led appropriately in to the first question from the topic guide related to their thoughts on enablers of and barriers to IPW. As participants opened up with their experiences, opportunities were taken by the researcher to ask more probing questions to encourage participants to elaborate on their responses. Examples of these probing questions included: “Can you tell me a little bit more about that?” or “Can you provide an example of when that happened?”. These probing questions demonstrated active listening and helped with gaining more in-depth insight into practice mentors’ experiences (King and Horrocks, 2010).

Brief field notes were also made by the researcher at appropriate times during the interviews. These notes were kept to a minimum to avoid distracting participants, and to ensure that the researcher could maintain active listening (Ryan et al., 2009). Following the interview, the researcher added reflective comments to any brief notes that were made during the interview. These reflective comments were beneficial in the analysis of the interview data, as discussed in Chapter 7.

In addition to providing a rich insight into practice mentors’ perspectives, the interviews presented opportunities to check and verify information from the survey. An extract from an interview transcript provided below is a specific example of this. On verifying the participant’s response to a question in the survey related to how frequently they worked with other professions, it was noted that the participant had answered the question in error:

Researcher: There was a couple of questions at the start that were asking you about how frequently you work with other professional groups and you had indicated nurses, doctors, AHPs at least once a month. Is that right?

79 Researcher: Yeah

Participant: Well, it’s probably daily Researcher: Is it daily?

Participant: I must have misunderstood that question.

Researcher: That’s okay; this is the beauty of doing the interviews is that I can kind of clarify.

Participant: Well I suppose, a day can go by without me interacting with the nurse or a doctor or a health worker, but it’s likely to be rare but it could go by and if I’m not speaking to one, I am usually emailing.

Researcher: Okay, so it’s a bit more frequently than once a month, would you say?

Participant: Yeah, I don’t know where I got that.

Mindful of participants’ work priorities as health and social care professions, thirty minutes were allocated to each interview. Whilst the discussion points from the interview topic guide (Appendix 13) were covered within this time during all of the interviews, on average, the actual interviews took approximately 40 minutes. Where the interviews extended beyond the allocated time, the researcher politely interrupted to point out the time and to check if participants were in agreement to continue.

A research assistant was recruited to transcribe the audio recordings from approximately half of the interviews. Clear guidance was provided to the research assistant in relation to consistent formatting of the transcriptions (Appendix 12). This guidance ensured consistency in the transcriptions, and ensured the secure storage and transfer of files. Assistance with the transcriptions was particularly beneficial when quantitative and qualitative data collection was occurring in parallel. Once all of the quantitative data had been collected, the remaining interviews were transcribed by the researcher. As described in Section 5.5 of this chapter, this enabled the researcher to become further immersed in the data and facilitated the process of thematic analysis.

80