As mentioned, I traveled to Ifunda on May 23rd, a nearby village, in hopes of conducting community focus groups. Focus groups are essentially “group interviews'' where people from the community participate in discussions. The goal is usually to have at least ten people in each discussion and have different groups for males and females since Dr. Strong has learned that women often speak less when everyone is together. You do not want too many people in the group because then people may not share all that they would have with a smaller group. Hence, ten is like the magical number. I met the mtendaji, the village leader, but unfortunately our invitation letter (allowing us to conduct research here) was lost at some point so we did not get much done. Dr. Cogburn and Dr. Strong went back to Ifunda on May 29th, but I stayed home because I was sick. Unfortunately, the focus groups were not conducted here due to miscommunication but they were able to conduct an interview with a traditional healer.

 

Before this, on the 24th, Dr. Cogburn gave a short presentation at the morning meeting about palliative care. She attended a workshop last February that was aimed at increasing the awareness of palliative care and training so she provided a short presentation about palliative care and then the workshop which happens twice every year. On the 26th, when we went to the lady’s house we met at the dialysis clinic. I think I made a lot of progress. We conducted two interviews, one with the patient and the other with her niece and we did the rank ordering method for both. For my rank ordering, I essentially have eight pictures (a male/female elder, a male/female adult, a male/female younger adult, and a male/female child). We describe different scenarios and ask the participant to rank their choices and describe their answers. The scenarios are who would be in the most pain with a broken leg, who would receive the best care, and who would be in the most pain if a relative passed away. Before arriving, I was a little nervous about if this method would actually work as I hoped it would and provide valuable insight and it has worked so much better than I thought it could. Everyone thus far has had very insightful explanations and it has really helped my understanding of how age impacts experiences, or at least the perceptions of how age impacts health.