Kleinman's eight questions put to one composite woman who calls her diabetes a touch of sugar, each question's reception recorded, then the assessment changes they prompted. Searches like "mn 552 unit 7 assignment example", "mn552 unit 7 sample" and "mn552 unit 7 example" land here.
"A Touch of Sugar": An Explanatory Model Interview With a Retired School Cook Living With Type 2 Diabetes
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MN552: Advanced Health Assessment
Unit 7 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Composite patient written as a model document. No real patient, family or clinician is described.
Setting and Method
The interview took place during a scheduled follow-up visit with a composite 64-year-old retired school cook whose type 2 diabetes was diagnosed nine years ago. Her daughter was present at the patient's request and sat beside her. I explained that I wanted to understand how she herself thinks about her condition before we talked about her results, and she agreed. I used the eight explanatory model questions described by Kleinman et al. (1978), asked in their original order and in plain language. Answers below are condensed, with her own phrases kept in quotation marks wherever a paraphrase would change their meaning. The interview took about 20 minutes. This report describes one person and does not generalize her answers to any cultural or ethnic group; Kleinman and Benson (2006) caution that explanatory models belong to individuals, and treating one person's account as representative of a group is the error the method exists to prevent.
The Eight Questions and Her Answers
1. What do you call your problem? "A touch of sugar." She said it the way one might describe a mild cold. She did not use the word diabetes during the interview.
2. What do you think caused it? "Tasting all day at work." For 31 years she cooked in a school kitchen and tasted sauces, desserts and baked goods throughout each shift. She believes the sugar "built up" over those years.
3. Why do you think it started when it did? It began the year she retired, when she "stopped moving all day" and started eating at home at irregular times.
4. What does it do to your body? It makes her tired in the afternoons and "makes my feet go to sleep at night." She links the numbness in her feet to the sugar.
5. How severe is it? "Not bad, not like my sister's." She sees her own condition as mild compared with her older sister's.
6. What kind of treatment do you think you should receive? She wants "a pill that keeps it down" and does not want injections.
7. What do you fear most about it? Losing a foot. Her older sister had a toe and then part of a foot amputated and now uses a wheelchair. This was the only answer she gave without a pause, and it was the longest answer of the interview.
8. What are the chief problems it has caused you? Worry about her feet, and her daughter "watching what I eat."
How Each Question Was Received
Questions 1 and 4 were answered easily and at once. Question 2, about cause, opened the conversation: she answered at length, laughed about how much she used to taste, and described specific recipes. Question 3 was answered after a pause and a glance toward her daughter, who nodded. Question 5 was answered with a comparison to her sister rather than a description of her own condition. Question 6 was answered quickly and firmly. Question 7 was answered without hesitation, and she looked at her feet while she spoke. Question 8 was deflected with a laugh at first; she answered only when I repeated it, and her daughter smiled when she mentioned being watched. I have recorded what I observed, pauses, glances, laughter and changes of subject, and have not assigned emotions to any of it.
What I Had Assumed
Before the interview I had planned a teaching session built around the word diabetes, her most recent hemoglobin A1C of 8.1 percent and a handout on carbohydrate counting. I assumed she would understand her condition in the same terms I did and that the main gap was information. Her answers showed that the gap was elsewhere. To her, "a touch of sugar" is a mild condition, less serious than her sister's, and a teaching session that opened with a number and a clinical label would have addressed someone who did not see herself in either. My plan would have been accurate and would still have missed her. I had also assumed that her main concern would be her blood glucose numbers. Her main concern was her feet, and I had not planned to examine them early in the visit.
Two Changes, Each Traced to an Answer
The first change came from question 7. Because her greatest fear was losing a foot, I moved the comprehensive foot examination to the start of the visit instead of the end. I examined her feet while explaining in her own terms what I was checking and why: whether she could feel the monofilament, whether the skin was intact and whether the pulses were strong. She had reduced monofilament sensation at four of ten sites on each foot, which I recorded and discussed with her. Current guidance calls for a comprehensive foot examination at least annually in people with diabetes, and more often when sensation is reduced (American Diabetes Association Professional Practice Committee, 2025). Placing it first turned her fear into the start of a plan rather than something left for the end of the visit.
The second change came from question 2. Her explanation of cause, years of tasting food at work, reframed the diet history I took later. Instead of asking about meals in general terms, I asked about her cooking at home and whether she still tastes as she cooks. She does, many times a day, and she bakes for her church most weekends. That single change produced a more accurate picture of her intake than a standard 24-hour recall would have, and it gave us a shared starting point for discussing changes, one that began from her own account of how the problem started.
Limits of This Interview
Three limits affect how these answers should be read. First, her daughter was present, and at least two answers, to questions 3 and 8, were given after a glance toward her. The daughter's presence was the patient's choice and may have made her more comfortable, but some answers may have been shaped by it, and a second conversation alone might produce different ones. Second, this was a single interview during a clinical visit, and explanatory models change over time as people learn more and as illness changes; her view of "a touch of sugar" may shift now that her foot examination has shown reduced sensation. Third, I am the clinician who will be teaching her, and she may have given answers she thought I wanted to hear, especially about treatment. I have recorded these limits so that a later reader does not treat this report as a fixed account of what she believes.
References
American Diabetes Association Professional Practice Committee. (2025). Standards of care in diabetes 2025. Diabetes Care, 48(Suppl. 1), S1-S352. https://diabetesjournals.org/care
Kleinman, A., & Benson, P. (2006). Anthropology in the clinic: The problem of cultural competency and how to fix it. PLoS Medicine, 3(10), e294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030294
Kleinman, A., Eisenberg, L., & Good, B. (1978). Culture, illness, and care: Clinical lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research. Annals of Internal Medicine, 88(2), 251-258. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-88-2-251
How this MN552 Unit 7 example is structured
The report separates what was said from how it was received, because the prompt usually grades the second as much as the first. Answers are condensed rather than transcribed, with her own phrases kept in quotation marks wherever paraphrase would change their meaning, sugar above all. Reception is reported through observable behavior, a pause, a glance at her daughter, a change of subject, never guesses about feelings. The author's assumptions get a paragraph: diabetes was the expected word, and teaching had been planned around it. Two changes follow, each linked to the answer that produced it. The foot exam moved forward and was explained in her terms. Her answer about cause, years of tasting food at work, reframed the later diet history. No cultural group is generalized from one person, and the report says so.
Get an MN552 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Kleinman's questions, the DSM-5 cultural interview or an instrument of the section's own may be assigned. Pass along the MN552 Unit 7 prompt, the tool it names and the rubric. The first report is written to those instructions free of charge, turned around in 24-48h, and keeps each speaker's phrasing intact while tracing what the answers changed. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
MN552 Unit 7 questions, answered
Must the interview be with a real person?
Your section's prompt decides that, and many do require a real interview that you conduct. The interview in the sample was invented, and it demonstrates how the report is organized and worded. If your own interview is required, the questions, the conversation and any consent involved are yours; the sample models the written report built on top of them.
Which interview tool fits this report best?
Kleinman's explanatory model questions suit a report about how questions were received, because each is short and open. The DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview runs longer, with a fixed structure, and some sections prefer it. The sample reports every question, its reception and the change it led to, using the tool the prompt names.
How do I avoid stereotyping in a cultural report?
Report the person, not the group. The sample describes one woman's words, beliefs and history and states explicitly that no conclusion about any community follows from them. Behavior is reported as observed, and the author's own assumptions are examined openly, which is usually what instructors look for most in this unit.