Skin Disease: A Qualitative Analysis

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The research paper ‘The family impact of skin disease: the Greater Patient concept’, outlines the effects on the quality of life of individual family members living with a patient diagnosed with a dermatological skin disease. The paper discus’s 18 key aspects of life that is significantly impacted by the skin disease. Patient’s suffered with one of 22 different skin diseases. The researchers, Basra and Finley used a qualitative research design to obtain data. However, when critiquing the article, there are 5 distinct problems with the research design that are evident, the problems will be discussed throughout this essay. These include that the validity of the data is not clear, the use of quantitative methods where used to answer a qualitative …show more content…

Mathematical analysis was used to demonstrate the data obtained from qualitative questions. Although this was addressed by the researcher in the discussions. The aim of the research was to determine the aspects of quality of life on family members with a member affected by skin disease, not how many.
The design of qualitative research in health care is to provide observations rather than mathematical analysis and is therefore open to personal opinion and judgment (Bricki & Green 2007). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research questions would have been a better research design for this paper, opposed to using the single qualitative question.
This is because the qualitative questions answer questions about human behaviour in the way of emotional and behavioural states and at the same time quantitative questions can examine why this is the case and this data can be converted into percentages and other mathematical analysis that can be …show more content…

The paper clearly stated that ethical approval was derived from an appropriate body, and that informed consent was obtained. However, it does not specifically address issues of anonymity and confidentiality and what consideration and management of any ethical issues are. For example, serious concern for the anonymity in the section related to 'sex life' a patient reading the article may be able to guess the participant referred to. Where it is stated "A woman whose husband had severe psoriasis admitted that she felt an aversion to his skin appearance and was looking for other relationships". Also the mother of a teenage daughter state ‘I feel embarrassed going out with her especially when she picks her scales'. Publishing such sensitive information as this raises concern of potentially damaging and embarrassing the participant due to the fact that people involved in this research possibly know each other and may establish who the family members are (Drew, Hardman & Hosp,

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