S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

153

asked disarming, non-confrontational, less probing and less intrusive questions. This assisted the interviewee to feel relaxed and more comfortable about being asked questions. The most time consuming section of the remote nurses interviews were questions related to the broad topics of perceived levels of competency, attitude and confidence, questions concerning mental health training and skill levels, coping strategies and perceived levels of resources available to deliver mental healthcare. Most questions for the nurses were couched within a self-assessment framework and involved their opinions, based on their experience and observations of other nurses when caring for mental health clients. Most of these questions required a degree of introspection, making of value judgments, disclosing personal bias’s and prejudices, personal feelings and beliefs and assessing others behaviour and those of their employer. Accordingly the researcher was delicate and sensitive in his style and manner (Kavanaugh & Ayres, 1998). Mindful, attentive and ‘gentle’ in his approach to questioning, the researcher employed a suite of ‘tools’ to entice and facilitate the telling of the participant’s stories; that stated, no participant cried, refused to answer or displayed overt signs of being uncomfortable. The researcher employed at appropriate times self-disclosure, being at times self-referential, humour, silence, softness in tone, pause, banter, re-visitation to topics, touch, at times expressing feelings of connectedness, agreement, solidarity and empathy to encourage and facilitate the rich, deep and personal data being disclosed. In ‘closing the interview’ the researcher ensured he had addressed all the topics from the interview guide. Further the researcher asked whether there was anything which the participant felt, in light of what had transpired, the researcher should know, discuss or had been missed, ‘sometimes clean-up questions [and opportunities] trigger really useful