Layout 1 [Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 2018; 2:7817] [page III] As I welcome you to another issue of Qualitative Re- search in Medicine and Healthcare (QRMH), I am truly grateful to the authors, the dedicated reviewers, our tireless Managing Editor, Francesca Baccino and, most especially, to our growing readership, for supporting this journal and for continuing to raise its profile as a theoretically articulate, methodologically diverse and impactful publication for scholars-practitioners (for the two are rarely separated; as research is inherently a practice). I am pleased to announce that Jay Baglia, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Communi- cation Studies at De Paul University has accepted my invi- tation to join our Editorial Board. Dr. Baglia, whose research foci are health communication, performance stud- ies and gender studies, is the author of The Viagra Ad Ven- ture: Masculinity, Media, & the Performance of Sexual Health (2005) and co-editor of Communicating Pregnancy Loss: Narrative as a method for Change. Thus far, QRMH has published diverse scholarship, ranging in topics from reproduction counseling in sub-Sa- haran Africa, action research teams in Sweden, rural eld- ers in Ghana, and the identity challenges of physician burnout and anorexia in young women in the United States (just to name a few) and showcasing a variety of qualitative approaches such as interviews, critical theory, ethnography, grounded theory, narrative analysis, dia- logue theory, autoethnography, personal narrative and mixed methods. The six original research articles in this issue continue to demonstrate the versatility, sophistication and rigor of qualitative methodologies in tackling the tensions and complexities present in what Elliott Mishler1 called the voices of the life-world: the multiply embedded accounts of health care users and providers. In the opening article, The introduction of the medic- inal partner in direct-to-consumer advertising: Viagra’s contribution to pharmaceutical fetishism and patient-as- consumer discourse in healthcare, Applequist’s com- pelling multimodal health communication study of advertising strategies examines the ideological underpin- nings of Viagra’s ask your doctor appeals and how the photography in Viagra ads combines semiotic resources to recruit both men and women into (a heteronormative) pharmaceutical fetishism. Atkinson, Gathright, Clardy, Thrush, and Messias’ close lexical analysis of a corpus of accounts by the staff in a medical center in their study Perspectives of meaningful work in a high-burnout aca- demic medical center: a discourse analysis problematizes the very discourse of burnout qua psychological condi- tion, demonstrating instead that physicians, nurses and basic scientists find meaning (and are able to communi- cate how they do so, if we actually study communication carefully as the authors do) in their work in spite of its challenges. Similarly, Ottewell’s A qualitative study of illness identity: schizophrenia and depression, an analy- sis of accounts of Japanese interviewees diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia, sheds light about how identities in healthcare are negotiable by those who claim them and are so identified, even when the possibilities for doing so seem restricted – as is the case of stigmatiz- ing and isolating psychiatric diagnoses, or, for that mat- ter, limiting and poorly examined classifiers like burnout. Ottewell’s argument that illness identity, or one’s self- understanding of being both object and subject to one’s own medical diagnosis is not a binary between being well or ill, but rather an ongoing both/and negotiation between normalcy and the social stigma of illness is both astute and highly consequential to psychiatric patients and prac- titioners. In A qualitative study of urban hospital transitional care, Feinglass, Wein, Teter, Schaeffer, and Rogers note how interviews are often the best, most efficient, and most meaningful way to shed light on healthcare delivery system change and innovation.2 Editor’s Introduction Mariaelena Bartesaghi Department of Communication, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA Correspondence: Mariaelena Bartesaghi, Department of Commu- nication, University of South Florida, CIS 1040, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, Tampa, 33620 FL, USA Tel.: +1.813.974.2145 - Fax: +1.813.974.6817. E-mail: mbartesaghi@usf.edu Received for publication: 9 September 2018. Accepted for publication: 10 September 2018. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial 4.0 License (CC BY-NC 4.0). ©Copyright M. Bartesaghi, 2018 Licensee PAGEPress, Italy Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 2018; 2:III-IV doi:10.4081/qrmh.2018.7817 Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 2018; volume 2:III-IV No n- co mm er cia l u se on ly Indeed, the authors practice interviewing as a way to not only go beyond expected clinical narratives but as ef- ficient collaborative engagement in the very conversations that will affect the improvement that the study is designed to investigate. For what could be more efficient than ac- tually understanding the experiences of those who must make sense of how to go about accomplishing compli- cated and stressful transitions as part of their workday? In this way qualitative research about healthcare is already transformative of healthcare practices for staff and pa- tients alike: it allows for better practices to emerge from those that are currently experiences as less than ideal. The articles by Spence, Smith and Wong and Meluch, further demonstrate the rich explanations that qualitative interviews yield for healthcare theory and effective prac- tice. What is interesting is that both studies deal with so- cial support, and as I see it, reveal that research interviews and focus groups are social support in (methodological) action. In Stress and burnout in anesthesia residency: a case study of peer support groups Spence and her co-au- thors return us to the topic of burnout, which has been prominently featured by research journal, as much as medical research and social discourse at large. By way of focus group interviews with medical residents in an anes- thesia program– whom the authors tell us is the medical specialty at greatest risk of suicide – the study reveals that the peer support groups in which the residents participate are not what relieves their stress. Instead, the key to re- ducing burnout would be more time with their families and friends. Finally, Meluch’s Above and beyond: an exploratory study of breast cancer patient accounts of healthcare provider information-giving practices and informational support adopts a constructivist grounded theory approach, which holds the researcher accountable in interpreting the data, to advance three consequential insights. The first two are theoretical, for Meluch demonstrates that physicians’ clear delivery of information about breast cancer treat- ment is inextricable from communicating support, there- fore allowing patients to feel secure with their treatment plans; the second is that uncertainty is not always a draw- back – as it uncertainty theory would have it – for ambi- guity can be a source of hope for patients. The last insight is actually a proposal as to how we might conceive of interviewing itself as a form of research as social engagement, if not actual social support. When researchers ask healthcare consumers and staff for expe- riential accounts they not only entitle interviewees to au- thor their own versions of how things are and should be3 for publication and organizational change, but first of all listen and record these versions, which may have never been attended to before. The active co-creation of health- care practices in qualitative research is nothing if not sup- portive and thus constitutive of change as it starts from the premise of listening and paying close attention. References 1. Mishler E. Research interviewing: context and narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1991. 2. Feinglass J, Wein S, Teter C, et al. A qualitative study of urban hospital transitional care. Qualit Res Med Healthc 2018;2:94-100. 3. Roulston K. Reflective interviewing. Newbury Park: Sage; 2011. [page IV] [Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare 2018; 2:7817] Editorial No n- co mm er cia l u se on ly