example director, vice-director, chief adviser and board of directors member. Three
participants met the criteria for selection. To protect participants’ privacy, none of the
participants’ names were revealed in this study. These individuals were referred to as
A, B and C separately to increase readability (see Table I).
Data collection. Before interview: complete hospital data were collected and the
interview protocol designed according to the study purpose and related literature were
collected. The interviewees were contacted by phone through the secretary to confirm
the time and locations for the interviews. Interviewees were provided with the
interview protocol.
During interview a relaxed and open atmosphere was created to provide good
interaction with the interviewees during questions and answers. The researcher
recorded the process with the interviewee’s permission for data reorganization and
analyses afterwards. The researcher’s role was data collector, analyst and interpreter.
The researcher repeated the key questions for the interviewees at different times to
obtain the interviewees response to the questions. The researcher then verified and
tested the consistency of these statements at different times.
After interview: the interview contents were transformed into script and the
interviewees were asked to look over the script to ensure that there were no differences
between the interviewees responses and the personal cognitions and interpretations of
researcher to avoid missing content or a cognition gap.
Trustworthiness and credibility. Using a triangulation strategy, validation of the
findings is increased. Three different data sources were:
(1) Documents that include the background, organization chart, job descriptions,
on-job training rules and the implementation of decisions in the meetings.
(2) File records such as service volume of the hospital, subordinates work situation,
quality of labor force, and customer satisfaction survey.
(3) The in-depth interviews, which were conducted in this study.
The interview content depended on the interview protocol questions. The interview
protocol questions were the key points reorganized from literature reviews and
observed and re-organized by the researcher in the hospital. It is hoped that led by
these questions, the interviewees could share their experiences systematically and
structurally and avoid missing questions and prevent entire interview process from
coming off the subject.