ENH70003 BECOMING AN ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL
Interview report
Due Date:
23:59 p.m.AESTOctober 31
Weighting:40% of overall unit grade
Submission:Turnitin
Word count:2,500 - 3000 words
Interview report
The aim of the written interview report is for you to demonstrate your understanding of the realities of the practice of environmental health. This is based on the key learning you gain from undertaking separate informational interviews with two professionally qualified environmental health practitioners. These interviews are not research-based, but interviews aimed at gaining insight into the practice of environmental health. You will be provided with the details of the practitioners who you will be interviewing by your academic supervisor.Please read the Guidelines for undertaking an interview with environmental health professionals.These guidelines are required to be followed to complete the written report.
The format of the written report is as follows:
Introduction and overview (500 – 800 words)
This section should introduce the assessment component. It should describe how you arranged the interview, where they took place ( e.g. via zoom, through mobile contact ), and the research you undertook before contacting the practitioner. It should also describe who you interviewed, including a brief overview of both practitioners backgrounds. For the written report, you must use pseudonyms to describe the practitioners (i.e. do not use real names or use Practitioner A and B), and general descriptors such as local, state, regional or organisational setting, rather than actual locations, municipal names or departments which may identify the practitioner.
Similarities and differences between the description of practice provided by the practitioners (300 words)
In this section, you are required to write a paragraph about what you identified as the key similarities and differences concerning what the practitioners described in relation to environmental health practice. For example, there may be similarities with respect to what they did in practice, how they performed certain tasks, the outcomes they were trying to achieve, their backgrounds, challenges faced, etc. Provide quotes from the interviews which support your interpretation.
Key learnings from the interviews (1500 words)
In this section, you are required to describe what you have learnt or what has deepened your understanding about the practice of environmental health. To do this, it recommended that you focus on at least 3 different aspects or key ideas about the practice of environmental health you gained from the interviews and write a paragraph on each. When writing the paragraph, aim to explain why you think this aspect is important to the practice of environmental health.
For example, you may wish to reflect on:
- what seemed to influence a practitioner’s decision to approach a problem in a particular way
- the various roles a practitioner may adopt when addressing a practice problem
- who is impacted or involved in environmental health practice decisions
- the types of knowledge and of skills or attributes which seem important to the practice of environmental health
- the key challenges of practice or what the benefits of practice are.
You might like to start each paragraph with:
One of the first key aspects of I learnt about the practice of environmental health was ….. During the course of the interview, the practitioner raised how this aspect was... This struck me as something that I had not considered before .... or this is something that I was aware of but was not sure of... It made me think...
The above are only examples to help guide you, and there is no right or wrong aspects or ideas you can use to answer this section. What you report on here will only become apparent to you after you undertake the interviews and critically reflect on the experiences described by practitioners. You are encouraged to provide quotes from the interviews to support your ideas and refer to the literature where possible to connect theory and practice. For example, have you come across any literature from your other units which may also have identified the importance of acting in a particular way? Or the challenges involved in addressing a particular aspect of practice? This section aims to hear your voice and for you to critically reflect on the practice of environmental health and present as a narrative that gives the reader insight into the realities of the practice of environmental health, as you have experienced through this process - not what it should look like!!
Conclude this section by describing what you consider is a key area of practice that you would like to focus on further for you to develop as an environmental health professional.
Overall summary (200- 300 words)
In this section, you are required to provide an overall summary of this experience. Describe your key learnings. What were the most positive aspects of undertaking the interviews, and what was the most challenging? You may also like to reflect on how this experience has aligned with what you have learnt so far in the program and any other previous and current experiences associated with the practice of environmental health. Did this experience change the way you thought about the practice of environmental health?
Finish this section by writing one sentence which describes what the practice of environmental health is about for you.
Supporting information
to be included in your
digital
portfolio
Appendices
- Copy of your interview protocol
- Excerpt of your notes from each of the interviews (no more than a page, this can be rough hand notes)
- Copy of your post-interview summary paragraph/ notes.