Using Visual Vignettes: My Learning to Date

Cancer survivors report a gap in work integration advice from healthcare professionals. This occurs despite physicians routinely providing comment upon survivors’ work abilities to insurers and employers. In order to understand the phenomena of survivors’ work integration from physicians’ perspectives, a vignette methodology was used. Vignettes were chosen as a means to explore physicians’ perspectives in a non-confrontational and sensitive manner. Vignettes, composed of photographs and narratives reflective of survivors’ lived experiences of work integration were presented to 10 physicians during individual interviews. In this manuscript, I outline my experience using vignettes, the learning I have achieved, and the modifications I intend to make before again similarly using vignettes with another stakeholder group. In this study, receptive participants expressed enjoyment of the real-life nature of the vignettes through which significant insights into the phenomena were successfully gleaned. In this case, vignettes were an effective means to sensitively explore physicians’ perspectives of cancer survivors’ work integration. Yet, considerations that I will undertake prior to the next stakeholder inquiry include incorporating findings from the physicians and modifying the presentation of survivors’ findings to be more applicable to that next stakeholder, reconsidering the number of vignettes used as well as the terminology and delivery mechanism, and refinement of questioning format.