Doctorate in Education
Research
Registered Nurses with Dyslexia
Aim of Study
​The study is part of my Doctorate in Education. I am interested in if having dyslexia has affected you throughout your life, as a nurse and how you have engaged in continuing professional development.
What will I need to do?
I will ask you to complete a timeline of your experiences of education, learning and dyslexia during your lifetime so that you will have a chance to think about your experiences and email them to me. You will be asked to take part in an in-depth semi-structured interview which will include asking to remember your experiences from the past including school experiences and diagnosis, as well as your current nursing and educational experiences. This interview will take place either by Skype or telephone, and may take 2 hours or possibly longer. I may need to speak to you again to clarify any issues that have been raised during the interview. The interview will be audio recorded unless you request otherwise. I will ask your permission again at the start of the interview.
Once the interview has taken place, I will translate that interview into your story and ask you to read and verify it. This will not be a complete transcript of the interview but an interpretation of what you have said. You will be able to change or remove any information that you are not happy with.
I will then ask you to take part in an online discussion forum with another nurse who has also taken part in an interview to verify any themes that I have been able to identify from your stories. You will not meet the other nurse and both your identities will be protected by the use of new email accounts and false names. I will explain to you how to use the discussion forum if required.
The planned questions within the interview are:
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Can you tell me a bit about your nursing career so far?
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When were you diagnosed with dyslexia and what was your experience of diagnosis?
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Tell me about your experience of learning in school, including any positive or negative experiences
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What made you decide to be a nurse?
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Can you tell me about your experience of nurse training
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What support were you offered during your training both in theory and practice
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Who have you told about your dyslexia throughout your career and what influenced that decision?
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What forms of learning have you engaged in since qualifying and why did you chose them? (think about non-formal learning as well as formal and how you best learn)
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What support do you get now and from whom?
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Are there any particular area of your work that you find more difficult because of the dyslexia?
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Do you have any strategies that you employ to help you overcome these difficulties?
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Are there any positive aspects or areas that you are better at because of having dyslexia?
However, as the interviews are semi-structured and narrative in nature these questions are only a guide. The most important aspect is that you feel able to tell your story.
What sort of questions will I be asked?
Consent
​You will be asked to give written consent to take part in the research. You will be free to withdraw from the project at any time without any adverse consequences and you don’t have to give a reason for this. If you do withdraw I will discuss with you whether you want the information you have given me to date to be included in the research analysis on the basis of confidentiality described below. If you prefer your data removed, it will be destroyed.
Your data will be protected using the eight Principles of Data Protection (Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law 2001), further details of which can be found online at http://www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=2393&p=0. The audio recordings, transcripts and subsequent narrative stories will be held in password protected files. Any paper copies will be kept in a locked file. The files will be destroyed once the research project had been completed and published.
How will the information I give be protected?
How will my identity be protected?
It is very hard to guarantee that nobody would be able to identify you form the information that you will give. However I will do my best to protect your identity. This will include the use of pseudonyms and limited use of information such as role and area of practice, for example senior nurse might be used or a staff nurse from a medical ward. You will have agreed your story before the information is used in the research and any information that you want to be removed will be so. Your identity on the online discussion forum will be protected by the use of novel email accounts that you will be provided with. This will allow you to access a dedicated site on the Institute Learning Pod which will only be accessible to the participants in the study, myself and the E-learning Co-ordinator. She will not know who has been allocated to the email addresses when setting up accounts to access the site.
Confidentiality
Some of the information that you tell me may be personal. You may be happy for that information to go into your story, but if you are not this will be removed at your request. Any information that you disclose during the course of the research but do not want to share will be held in confidence, including having dyslexia. However you must also be aware that if you disclose an issue of poor or unsafe practice I am professionally bound by the Nursing and Midwifery Council to disclose this. I will encourage you to speak to the appropriate person or use the appropriate reporting mechanism initially but may have report a safeguarding incident if you don’t.
Where will my information be presented?
The data from this project will form part of my Doctorate in Education and therefore will be seen by my supervisor, co-supervisor and those marking my work. The research will be presented to the Open University and a copy will be kept in the library and the Institute library and may be accessible online. The research may also be published in nursing and educational journals. However, the information that you have given will be anonymised before it is included in the study.
Still Interested?
Go to the Further information page to contact me