Blog 21: Interview 4 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  

- The most important thing I learned from the interview was that making a patient comfortable, having good communication with them and their family, and allowing for a great relationship is essential when being a nurse. 

2.  How will what I learned affect my final lesson?

- What I learn will affect my final lesson by allowing me to incorporate what was said as a source and reference back to it as a connection to my answers. I can use this interview of a way to support some answers and back up details that I've come up with already - supporting details. 

- Link to voice memo: Interview #4 - 

* CLICK HERE* 

Blog 20: Fourth Interview Questions

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  What is this person's area of expertise?

- Elena Dela Rosa: A registered nurse 

2.  Post 20 open-ended questions you want to ask an expert in the field concerning your senior project. Your focus should be finding answers to your EQ.

 1. How can a primary care nurse, best ensure the quality of care for their patients?

 2. Does trust and communication actually impact the quality of care with patients?

 3. How do you get to know your patient? What kinds of questions are asked throughout?

 4. How important is direct communication?

 5. Is there any other way of communication that the patient and nurse do? If so, what?

 6. What's the most efficient way of communication between a patient and nurse?

 7. How is the nurse/doctor sure that they understand exactly what the patient is stating? 

 8. Is there any instructed way/tone that you're suppose to do while communicating with patient?

 9. How important is self-reflection for a nurse/doctor?

 10. How do you address doctors/nurses that aren't putting enough effort to assist a patient?

 11. Does every nurse and doctor understand their priorities when working? 

 12. Does every nurse/doctor have passion for what they do?

 13. How do you know that nurses/doctors understand their purpose and values at work?

 14. Why is it important for a nurse/doctor to talk about religion?

 15. What's the very first question that a doctor/nurse is supposed to ask their patients? 

 16. How do you face aggressive/lying patients? 

 17. What's something that inspires you to keep doing what you do in your career?

 18. How does a patient and its family keep safe and calm when addressing certain issues?

 19. How are complicated situations approached to a patient? 

 20. How is a death sentence approached to a patient?





Blog 17: Interview 3 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?

-  One of the most important things that I learned from my interview was that everything is connected one way or another. I learned that if there's no communication, there's no trust, then there's no patient/doctor relationship, and then the patient is then in danger. Another thing that I learned was that a nurse/doctor needs to understand him/herself in order to be able to help others; in other words, they need self-reflection time. 


2.  How has your approach to interviewing changed over the course of your senior project?

-  My approach to interviewing has been a lot smoother; by this I mean that I can easily call or text a person and ask for an interview with confidence. I feel a lot more straight forward and confident in what I say and in what iI'm doing. So, over the course, I'd say that I've grown to not be as shy or scared to ask for help. 

- Link to voice memo: Interview #2 - 

* CLICK HERE* 

Blog 14: Interview 3 Preparation

EQ: How can a primary care nurse best ensure the quality of care for their patients? 

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  What is this person's area of expertise?

•  I plan on Interviewing my mentor, or one of her co-workers. She's been out of town and just got back, so the whole interview planning is still in the works. 

2.  Verify that you have called your interviewee to schedule an interview.  What is the date and time of the interview? 

• Interview is set to happen February 1st, or the 8th, depending on work schedule of the interviewee. The time would be at 2:00pm at my mentor's office in Arcadia, CA.  

3.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you find research resources that would help to answer the EQ.

• What can a nurse do to make sure that the patient and him/her are always on the same page? Are there any obstacles she/he must overcome? 

4.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you think about other useful activities you might do to help you answer the EQ (IC2, possible experts to talk to, etc).

• How do you ensure that the patient feels safe enough to trust the nurse that's working with him/her? 

5.  Phrase two open-ended questions that help you to understand your interviewee's perspective on an aspect of your EQ. 

• Have you ever encountered bad quality of care by a nurse? If so, How'd that work out for you?
• How does a patient learn that she's getting all the help she needs? What reassures the patient and why?

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

• My actual mentorship is actually starting Monday, November 2nd at 2:00pm. I've had quite some trouble finding a mentor, but as of last week, I was able to finally find one that's willing to walk the journey with me. I hope that I will be able to shadow her and her working projects.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?   

• Mrs. Flores actually helped me find my mentor. One day, she walked into Mr. Rivas's class and they were talking about the senior project. He then decided to point out the fact that I, Itzia, still didn't have a mentor. She decided to ask me for my topic, and I told her. Immediately she smiled and stated that she had a friend that can potentially suit my topic, and she told me that she'd email her. So, I reminded her and she emailed. Within a day, I had a response  - yes. So, Nurse Johnson, my mentor, decided to meet up in person on October 23rd, so that we could talk about how this whole mentorship would work out. On that exact same day, after we figured out our schedule and stuff, I decided to interview her and we got to know each other quite well. I'm guessing that my persistence and my eagerness convinced her to say yes. 

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

• From a 1 through 10, I would say that my comfort level with Nurse Johnson is a 6. This is probably because we haven't quite started on the mentorship. 

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

• Everything went well with this interview. I think this because her answers were straight to the point, very concise and straightforward. The questions were simple, things felt nice. Maybe I need to improve my questions, and come up with a lot of more in-depth questions. I know this because our total interview time is literally like 5 minutes - it could've been longer if I had asked better questions. Maybe next time, I'll ask peers about my questions, and ask for feedback on how well they're asked/written. 

- Link to voice memo: Interview #2 - 

* CLICK HERE* 

Blog 7: Second Interview Preparation

1.  Who is your mentor and where do they work?  If their workplace does not reflect their expertise, what makes them an expert? 

• Mentor: Cara Johnson
• She's an RN - Manager Regional Care Management 
• Works with Health Care Partners - North Region
• I'm not quote sure what she does exactly, but I will as soon as we meet in person and I start going in for mentoring hours. 

2.  What five questions will you ask them about their background?

1. Where did you go to school and how did you come across in choosing the school?
2. What motivates you to keep doing what you're doing today? 
3. What is one of the biggest struggles or obstacles you had to face, if any, to get to where you are now? How did you face it?
4. How did you come across choosing the career path? Were you influenced? 
5. If you were to look back to where you first started school in college, if you could change one thing that would impact or would have impacted your life today, what would it be? Why?

Blog 5 - Interview 1 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  Is there anything I would do differently for other interviews?

• The most important thing I learned from the interview was that being in the medical field has many challenges in which you're forced to find yourself before you start falling apart. I learned that you can't help a patient, or anyone in general, if you yourself aren't okay. Accepting yourself as a person, knowing your strengths and weakness, and reassuring yourself of your beliefs and morals are very critical to do while living by this career. However, I also learned that if this is something I wasn't to do, something I love, something I'm passionate about, then it's worth every second of my life. Something that I can improve upon for future interviews, is get more specific with my questions. 

2. Did I get additional resources and contacts?  What is the most useful?  Why?

• The most useful additional resources that my interviewee provided me with, was reading and looking into nursing journals (AJN), to provide me with more in depth answers to any questions that I may have. The reason to why these journals would be helpful, is because of the fact that their vocabulary is a lot easier to read and understand, than the vocabulary of a specialized doctor. Another helpful suggestion, was to talk to or interview a beside nurse, an LVN, or a PA, since they'd have a little more background in the the primary care part of this project, than a regular doctor would. 

3. What makes my interviewee qualified to help me? 

• The reason to why this interviewee is qualified to help me, is because of the fact that she's a registered nurse that works in the emergency room department of a hospital that's located in Pasadena. She can tell you all about patients, being a leader, taking care of yourself, and working for long shift hours. The fact that she knows so much about everything, and she's able to explain how everything ties in and comes together makes her more than qualified to help me. Her skills, qualities, and her persona allowed for her to be qualified to start me off in the right foot with this project. 

 - Link to voice memo: Interview #1 - 

* CLICK HERE* 

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

Who do you plan to interview? 

• I plan to interview Cecilia Maldonado because she's a nurse that works in the ER, and that's very fascinating to me. It's quite amazing how a human being can function normally, and be able to assist with her knowledge in an ER; So, getting an inside on that should be quite the adventure. Allowing her to express her experience with patients, her love for her job, and her admirations for surgeons will be quite amazing to hear. Understanding her passion towards medicine can highly influence my future career and me. 

Questions that I will ask my interviewee:

1.  I'm interested in studying health medical practices, working with patents, and being in the environment of a hospital. What can you tell me about it? 
2.  In your perspective, what's the hardest part of being a nurse? Why?
3. Who do you recommend I talk to get more information?
4. What's the reason you chose this career?
5. What makes you want to do what you do every day of your life?
6.  How are you supposed to react to a severe situation every time you're in the ER?