Current Medical History

Views of Podiatry Student and Staff Regarding the Current Medical History Form Used at the University of Johannesburg Podiatry Clinic

A research proposal presented to the

Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Johannesburg, as a partial fulfillment for B Tech degree in

Podiatry by

Mandy Mabunda

Student number: 2011 21580

Supervisor: __________________ ____________ Ms. M. Purbhoo Date

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The UJ Podiatry Clinic has been operating for many years now. The clinic has its own formulated medical history form that is used during patient-practitioner interviews. This form has been in use for the past 15-20 years without being reviewed. An anecdotal observation suggests that the current form is not as detailed

It is very broad and has fundamental elements to it that if missed, will lead to misdiagnosed and mismanagement (Bickley, 2003, Frowen et al., 2010). History taking is an important aspect of effective patient management. As broad as history taking is with its many elements, amongst them is medical history. Medical history includes: past and current medical history, medication history, allergy history, surgical history and family history (Austin Diagnostic Clinic, 2012, Bickley, 2003, Caffiero and Goldstein, 2010, Frowen et al., 2010, Swartz, 2010). The purpose of a medical history is to gather patient data, assess the impact on the patient’s health and plan a therapeutic response thereby to improve the overall well-being of the patient and not only focus on their chief complaint (Bickley, 2003). By facilitating the patient’s history, one is able to generate a series of hypothesis about the nature of the patient’s concern which will be tested by asking for more detailed information (Bickley,

The students and staff will only participate in the study once they have read and understood the participation information, and signed the consent form. The data will be collected through a face-to-face focus group interview. A suitable date and time of when the focus group interview will be held will be organised with all the participants’. The moderator of the interview, which will be the researcher, will have a set of questions (Annexure D) which will be discussed individually during the session. Queries, questions and suggestions from the participants’ will be welcomed. An audio-recorder will be used to record the entire interview and specific notes/key points will be taken down by the moderator if need be.

4.5) Data Analysis

The Pattern-based discourse analysis will be used to analyse the data (Braun and Clarke, 2013). This method of analysis will involve listening, reading and re-reading the data to identify and interpret patterns and features of the data that are similar and those that overlap (Braun and Clarke, 2013). These patterns will then be grouped together under specific themes that answer the research question (Braun and Clarke 2013). The themes will be coherent, distinct, fit with each other as they tell their story about the data collected (Braun and Clarke,