After looking at the data from the 181 patients surveyed during the Family Needs Assessment that focused on children under 18, we discovered that 1/3 of the patients never reported their viral load during the survey. This meant that we would not be able to correlate their health outcomes to their management of HIV since ARV adherence is determined via viral load per the most recent WHO guidelines (2015). Therefore, I compiled a list of patient names and our data analyst helped me to search the national EMR and WE-ACTx for Hope's paper records to fill in the gaps. While about 1/4 of them were not on ARV's as of yet, the addition of this data was still important. Now, instead of 67% response rate, we have an 85% rate of data that we could correlate to ARV adherence.
Another concern was the duplication of one patient name on the list in addition to not all the survey results being translated into English. Therefore, I sat down with one of our bilingual employees that assists our data analyst and spent several hours finished translating. Initially we were translating from Kinyarwanda and conversing in English, but when we discovered that Swahili was a better method of understanding each other, we switched to that. He would translate the Kinyarwanda written responses into Swahili and then I'd write them in collouqial English. Additionally, we discovered while doing this that many of the "Comments" sections which were filled in were not done so in legible Kinyarwanda. Therefore, some of the results still remain in Kinyarwanda since they weren't legible to a native speaker. Alas!
After these strides, we planned to sit down on Thursday with the doctor and one of the trauma counselors to discuss the details of our next steps: organizing Focus Groups. We needed to determine things such as which age groups we'd group together, how many children would be in each focus group and how to supportively word the questions to encourage responses. While at the Nyacyonga clinic with Edmund, we discussed his impressions of the focus group draft of questions. He pointed out that he wasn't clear on what a focus group was since he's never done one before. I explained that focus group sessions would allow for more specific information and for us to ask more questions and hone in on responses as to what and why these factors are affecting HIV adherence.
Another concern was the duplication of one patient name on the list in addition to not all the survey results being translated into English. Therefore, I sat down with one of our bilingual employees that assists our data analyst and spent several hours finished translating. Initially we were translating from Kinyarwanda and conversing in English, but when we discovered that Swahili was a better method of understanding each other, we switched to that. He would translate the Kinyarwanda written responses into Swahili and then I'd write them in collouqial English. Additionally, we discovered while doing this that many of the "Comments" sections which were filled in were not done so in legible Kinyarwanda. Therefore, some of the results still remain in Kinyarwanda since they weren't legible to a native speaker. Alas!
After these strides, we planned to sit down on Thursday with the doctor and one of the trauma counselors to discuss the details of our next steps: organizing Focus Groups. We needed to determine things such as which age groups we'd group together, how many children would be in each focus group and how to supportively word the questions to encourage responses. While at the Nyacyonga clinic with Edmund, we discussed his impressions of the focus group draft of questions. He pointed out that he wasn't clear on what a focus group was since he's never done one before. I explained that focus group sessions would allow for more specific information and for us to ask more questions and hone in on responses as to what and why these factors are affecting HIV adherence.
