Write an account of your interviewing experiences including the following: a description of the patient and their adaptations to their condition. Your feelings about meeting people with chronic problems and the influence of those feelings on the interview

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PCC Module 3 Essay

Mani Shidanshid D6

Write an account of your interviewing experiences including the following: a description of the patient and their adaptations to their condition. Your feelings about meeting people with chronic problems and the influence of those feelings on the interview, the interview skills you used and how they compared with your experience of interviewing simulated patients.

        The third module of the Patient contact course gave us, for the first time, the opportunity to fully explore all the aspects of a patient with a chronic illness’s life and to delve into the adaptations that such a condition has forced upon them.

        I must concede that I was initially apprehensive about meeting a patient with a chronic illness, having a somewhat naïve and apocryphal presupposition that all chronic patients would be in an ailing state of health, making it difficult to conduct the interview and obtain relevant information. However such prejudices were very quickly quelled on meeting Mr G, a cheerful, easily comprehensible and pleasant 90 year old gentleman, the nature of whose condition, it was difficult to judge at first, as he seemed to be in, relative to his age, good health.

Mr G has accumulated a number of health problems over his years of life, he told us of 7 different drugs he was taking for heart problems, his thyroid gland, cholesterol and what he termed as ‘problems with his waterworks.’

        Mr G, didn’t seem to know very much about the nature of his health difficulties, on asking him what he understood about the problems with his health he confessed; ‘I listen to the doctor and take my medication seriously and vigorously but I don’t understand my problems a lot.’ This brings us onto an interesting debate, what is the best method of managing chronic illness? Anderson and Bury argue the need for a ‘reorientation of the focus for care from repairing damage caused by disease, to education, and understanding for living with chronic illness.’ (1) If this school of thought is to be adhered to it would indicate, that the medical profession should pay more due regard to the broader aspect of chronic illness management, ensuring that patients such as Mr G, have a better education of their chronic illness, which will help them manage all aspects of their life better, pitching towards an improved quality of life, in the long term.

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        It emerged that the most serious and debilitating of Mr G’s health problems were his angina, the history of which stemmed back to the early 70’s. Mr G, told us of the first occurrence 37 years ago when he had experienced chest tightness and had collapsed twice, once at work and once when he was on the bus, sitting at rest, he had felt chest pain and subsequently collapsed. Taken to hospital he was told that he had had two suspected heart attacks, and was diagnosed with angina.

It came as somewhat a challenge determining what the most limiting ...

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