Qualitative Research in Primary Health Care
John Drury is a lecturer with the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Postgraduate Medicine at ECU and has an ongoing appointment as a visiting professor with the College of Nursing, Silliman University, in the Philippines. He travels to the Phillipines each year to help postgraduate students there with their qualitative research projects, a requirement for completion of their doctoral studies. These students are handpicked by the College because they are highly motivated to complete their studies, have a proven academic track record, are respected for their clinical nursing expertise, well spoken in English and express a willingness to stay and work in the Philippines after completing their postgraduate studies.
The College also has a thriving undergraduate nursing program
which is a major source of income for Silliman University.
Under the leadership of Dean Maria Sy-Sinda, small groups
of nursing academics and students who are participating in
the primary health care component of the undergraduate nursing
program, leave the civilised hustle and bustle of coastal
Dumagete where the university is located and travel to remote
villages in the country. They live for weeks at a time in
the villages while providing primary health care interventions
to the impoverished locals who have gained little benefit
from the economic development that has improved the quality
of life in other parts of the country.
The book that John Drury is holding in the photograph is
a best selling nursing and midwifery research text in Australia
and New Zealand. It comprises twenty one chapters, twenty
of which tell the reader how to conduct and publish research
projects. The other chapter contains a full publication and
critique of one qualitative and one quantitative article
that had previously been published in peer reviewed nursing
journals. The qualitative article was authored by John Drury
and his colleagues used Husserlian phenomenology with Colaizzi’s
method of data analysis to describe the experiences of the
nurses who provide primary health care intervention. The
inclusion and critique of this publication has raised the
research profile of ECU, and also benefits the College of
Nursing at Silliman University by focusing more attention
on the health benefits of its primary health care curriculum.
Reference:
Schneider, Z., Whitehead, D., & Elliott, D. (2007). Nursing
and midwifery research: Methods and appraisal for evidence-based
practice (3rd ed.). Sydney, NSW: Elsevier.
