Post Interview Notes + Reflection

I interviewed Cat Garden, a Health Policy and Administration Professor, at Health Care University.

Q&A

1. Can you tell me about your typical day.

“I spend most of my day fielding student questions, grading assignments, writing observations about those assignments and determining what I may need to clarify in order to reinforce the lesson or the instructions, interfacing with students or clients that I am coaching, preparing presentations for conferences, and writing curriculum for coursework or onsite client training.”

2. How would you describe your organization?

“My organization is a large academic institution with many opportunities to receive and process communication. Communication on a daily basis ranges from students to university leadership, and everyone in between, so I am always prepared to expect anything! I check my email several times each morning and throughout the day so that I can manage the complexity that comes with many forms of communication.”

3. Who do you communicate with in the Business community at Health Care University?  

“I teach online, so interact with very few in the HCU business community.”

4. Do you communicate with professors outside of the HCU community?
5. If so, how and what about?

“Yes, all the time. I teach for another institution, actively research and write with another set of colleagues, and regularly work with the MHA program at another institution on their continuing education, professionals in the classroom, and student mentoring.

6. You got your PHD in Workforce Education and Development at Health Care University, what made you achieve that goal at that campus?

“For many years, I was a hospital administrator. I loved my job, but most especially loved the parts of my job that had to do with growing leadership and developing talent. Therefore, I left hospital leadership and started a consulting company that focused on leadership and organization development. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided that I wanted to know why what I did worked…hence the PhD in WFED. I chose HCU for that degree for two reasons: reputation (#1 in the country) and proximity/program structure (I live 2.5 hours from main campus, and the coursework was structured so that I could commute to class)”

7. Can you tell me about any projects that you’re currently working on or that you recently completed?

“I am always working on something! In addition to teaching at the university level, I also teach leadership in companies. I develop and deliver those training programs for individual companies, or through societies, such as the PA Medical Society. I am also an executive coach, so at any point in time, am actively coaching an executive on how use their strengths to be successful in their roles.”

8. What would you consider to be “good writing” in your career or at this organization?

“In my mind, good writing consists of proper grammar (no naked words…”this” “that” without an object, proper spelling, punctuation), citation/references, and most importantly getting to the point. It’s very important to be organized in writing so that the reader sees the answer to the question or understands a request or point of view quickly and easily. I often suggest that a writer state their point, support that point with research, and further support their point with examples. Whether in school or in the business world, this structure and approach works very successfully. Be precise, yet concise.”

9. How do you stay up-to-date with healthcare advancements?

“I receive several daily news feeds about the latest healthcare headlines, I am a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives which requires that I stay abreast of the latest and attend conferences to inform my thinking and receive continuing education credit, I network regularly with healthcare providers through my consulting practice and professional associations. The field is changing very rapidly and it is a daily priority for me to stay on top of those changes.”

10. What do you see as the future of healthcare?

“I see healthcare as a profession that will continue to evolve. As long as we have disease, we will have healthcare. I believe that our challenge as healthcare professionals is to create environments that do all that we can to make healthcare (and healthy lifestyles) available to those in need and that we build on the idea of healthy communities. In this process, it is important to build administrative and physician leaders that can partner with communities and build organizations that engage employees and patients in cultures that support and sustain health. I think that as technology evolves, we will continue to be less and less invasive in our way of delivering care. I think that we will also become more realistic about quality and quantity of life discussions. Living longer is a blessing and curse, and as healthcare providers, we need to think about the gap between living independently and needing support. That gap provides a tremendous amount of opportunity to have conversations that help people to better prepare financially and emotionally for the time when living independently is not an option. I would love to say that I see a world free of disease, but in at least the next 25 years, I don’t see that dream becoming reality!”

Reflection

I think in the end the interview went okay even though it was not how I wanted to do it. The person I originally chose agreed at first and then never responded to any of my emails. So, I visited her office hours and she was not there. I called her number and also left a voicemail and I still couldn't get a response from her. So, I moved onto the next person, which is also my advisor. We agreed to have the interview over the phone because our schedules both did not work out to meet up for the interview. He also never responded. I take an HPA course now, but it's an online course from World Campus so I had no choice but to reach out to her because it was so last minute. We had the interview over the phone which made me a little less nervous.

What did not work was having the interview over the phone and not in person. It did not let me see her facial expressions and movements. I couldn't really study her based on the phone call except for the different tones she had use for some answers. For example, when she answered questions 6 and 10, her tone was almost like excited to be answering the question(s). What worked is that the questions and her answers flowed really nicely. Also, because it was over the phone I was calmer so I did not stutter as much as I would if it was in person.

For rhetorical situations/textual genres, Cat communicates with very few since she teaches online courses. She communicates with other colleagues and students, and emails them a lot.

To connect with what we have learned in class, Cat stated “Be precise, yet concise,” which is basically what we have been learning since the start. In “How to Read Like a Writer,” it stated that adding a quote is a good technique in your writing. “Be precise, yet concise,” was a great quote and really stuck with me.