Nearly there with the interviews, the final 2 interviews of the planned 30 are scheduled for next week.  These have taken a lot longer than I had planned for as I had hoped to complete them by the end of October originally and then by the end of December.......  Why has it taken me so long?  The work I needed to do for the Upgrade put everything else on hold without a doubt; plus the day job at the practice is very busy with all sorts of ongoing additional issues to resolve as a result of the Norfolk PCT Turnaround Plan which aims to saves £50 million by March 2008, so lots of distractions and long working days there have meant that even just arranging the interviews is not always as easy as one would think.

I have also accepted that to do all my own transcribing is unrealistic and not the best use of my time, I have transcribed 5 of my interviews myself but have arranged for a professional transcriber (recommended by one of my PhD Supervisors) to transcribe the remaining 25 interviews.  I will be sending her the interview recordings mid January when she is available to work on them, she estimates it will take her about a month to transcribe them all.  In the meantime I will work on my second literature review chapter.  Once the transcripts are back I will need to listen and go through them all as the starting point of my data analysis; a process which will take me several months.

I have got meetings set up with various researchers at UEA throughout January to liaise and network with them with a view to developing contacts for not only the present but also for a postdoc future.  End of February will see me on the Kings Fund Clinical Leadership and Management Course which is part of the Health Foundation funding; that reminds me - I need to get my report written and sent to the Health Foundation now that I have completed my first year.

Not forgetting my clinical role - I am about to embark on the Nurse Prescribing course also - distance learning at Winchester University - it has now reached the point where I cannot defer doing this any longer as my inability to prescribe is becoming very limiting to my NP role; I hope it will not be too arduous, it really should be underpinning what I already do using practice protocols/PGDs, but as always it is getting through the various hoops.