Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! I apologize for the delay - just finished up a few weeks as medicine ward attending...
great work! for this project that has qualitative and quantitative components, I would focus your work in this class (so HW#3) on the qualitative component, so the analysis of the reflective writings.
For this, I would recommend describing your research question not as a yes/no, but instead as: "How does an educational intervention using video recorded patient narratives impact medical student's perceptions of difficult patients."
or something along those lines - not yes/no but who/what/when/where/how
you might want a separate research question for the interviews you do with the patients and families (though I'm not sure you need to do this, as patient centered care has been well defined in many places).
I think we answered your questions in class a bit about engaging medical students. That focusing on what are the barriers to empathy in patients they see – or what have they seen as the barriers for others.
There is a lot of debate about PFAC members, and that they are a selected experience (often more well-off, white). Ours are not necessary those characteristics. This is a limitation, but every study has a limitation, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Sorry for the really delayed comments! Hope this isn't too late to be helpful.
Rachel, this looks like an interesting project. I like how you are planning to capture the data in multiple ways, from survey, to more individualized questionnaire, to the focus groups. I would recommend though keeping the questionnaire short, as it might seem a little overwhelming to students (like myself) to have to give so much feedback. I do think having both is important as I do think there is some pressure to conform with group opinion, especially among medical students about such an important topic, and you may loose diversity of opinions if you limit feedback to just a focus group.
Are you thinking about making 2 publications from this data? One about the focus groups with the families and the residents and medical students about perceptions about empathy on the wards (the focus groups that are informing your videos) and another about the medical student reaction to the videos? It sounds like you are going to put a lot of effort in so it might be worth it to divide it into 2 publications.