Team:ATOMS-Turkiye/Practices/Street Interview


INTERVIEW

As the human practice team, we did an extensive interview with the people and patients in order to understand the importance of the improvements in health technologies for them, as well as their perspective on our Project. This study is composed of three different parts:

Group 1: Patients

1. We came across our first patient in a pharmacy’s. He was shopping for his prescripted medications for his yearlong diabetes, along with his later appeared gastric reflux that has been going on for two years. Oblivious of the innovations in medicine technology, he was awaiting a change and looking for permanent solutions for his disease.

2. Our patient with the greatest importance is surely our fellow team member Furkan Gunes.

After being alarmed due to the ongoing discomfort in his stomach area, the patient makes an appointment, later to be diagnosed with reflux and gastric as a result of the endoscopy performed. In addition to that, the doctors found out the level of H. Pylori to be threefold of the norm.

After the two-week quad medication, he has been using the proton pump inhibitor (Rabby-D) for a month. He is especially delighted to be a part of such Project after his own experience.

Group 2: Doctors

The doctor we have been in touch with and asked any further questions of ours is Prof. Dr. Sefa Guliter, Turgut Ozal University academician, and Gastroenterologists.

We consulted with him regarding our patients. Firstly, learning the processes of medication usage. For the patient diagnosed with H. Pylori Ulcer, Ampicilin+Metronidazol+Proton Pump Inhibitors+ Bismuth, under the condition of these medications to be used for exactly fourteen days, with the percentage of disposal of H. Pylori being %80 for the quad medication process. While vomiting and nausea might be experienced as side effects, the greatest disadvantage of the quad is the unattainability of Bismuth in different parts of the world.

Besides, in Turkey Kleoktromisin is currently not used, due to the vaccinations, and medications applied to kids on early ages that create an immunization against this particular medication. Thus, ampicillin is being used since 2004.

He finds the notion of the development of a vaccination for Helicobacter pylori to be reasonable. The logic behind it being the reoccurrence of hp after the treatment. However, if hp can be dispensed from the patients diagnosed with Ulcer, the percentage is seen to be falling from %50 to %5, moreover, it prevents gastric cancer.

When we asked him his view on genetic medicine, he told us that the area is to make great improvements in health.

Group 3: The People

Most interviews of this kind are based on only doctors and patients, and this causes the people to stay in the back seat, hence preventing us from reaching different point of views. As the P&P team, we also aimed them this time and here is what we came upon:

Our first interviewee is one we encountered in the morning while she was doing her daily cleaning work as a domestic. Despite not knowing much about stomach diseases, she happened to have close friends coping with them.

“One of my friends, experiences burning in his stomach, he used his medications for a couple months and recovered, but then it resumed.” She says. She expects the upcoming new medications to be more useful.

Our second interviewee is an old lady working as a cashier in a small shop. She tells that she had a now-recovered stomach disease two years ago. Diagnosed with psychological gastric later to be found healthy after the endoscopy, she told us that she used Proton-Pump Inhibitor for a year, that, unfortunately, did not lead to a full recovery like other patients. She said she would use medications again, only if it is guaranteed to fully recover her this time.

The third interviewee of ours is a waiter. Telling us about a close relative of his that had to undergo a surgery due to the diagnosis of stomach cancer, that resulted with losing his stomach. After explaining him our Project, he told us he has a complete and utter faith in doctors, and that even though he finds the state of health technology to be sufficient, he is looking forward to the innovations in the area.