ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT FOR PATIENTS IN HOSPITAL

Ethnographic Project for Patients in Hospital

Ethnographic Project for Patients in Hospital

Introduction

Qualitative inquiry has made an important contribution to our understanding of health and illness over the past 40 years. Since the 1920s, qualitative research has been used by anthropologists to delineate beliefs about health and illness in various cultural groups, often in what they called “primitive natives.” In the 1960s and 1970s, sociologists began using ethnography and ethnomethodology to study health and illness in American cultural groups (Smith, 2005).

Impediments to Health

Also categorized under health are a large number of studies investigating discrepancies in health; that is, why individuals in communities, cultural groups, or segments of the population are not uniformly healthy. Many of these studies use participant action research (PAR) and ethnography, exploring community and cultural beliefs and values, determining what conditions result in poor health behaviors (such as infant bottle-feeding, smoking behaviors, or drug and alcohol use), and identifying what impedes the acceptance of care (such as noncompliance with immunization programs and poor diabetes care) (Scully, 2005).

Experience of Caregivers

There is a parallel literature on becoming a nurse. These studies describe what it is like to be a neophyte nurse; to be a more experienced nurse, yet carry a caseload beyond one's capabilities; or to cope with emergencies that one has not previously encountered. Some of this research gets to the heart of these problems, describing the human side of caring and the developing nurse-patient relationship. Some of this literature is phenomenological, providing insights into the meaning of caring, suffering, and fatigue (Ratcliff, 2002).

Some of this research uses grounded theory, showing how one develops relationships or how one copes with the nuances of nursing, developing mid-range theories. Some of this research uses ethnography, describing, for instance, nurse-patient interaction in the intensive care unit (ICU) when the intubated patient cannot verbalize, and providing clear and concise strategies to enhance communication with these patients. Other research uses narrative inquiry so that nurses may learn from patients' or other nurses' stories about what a certain experience is like, hence informing their own practice (Nelms, 2006).

Some of this research uses videorecorded data and microanalysis so that nurses can study, for instance, implicit patterns of touch or the pain responses of infants. Finally, some of this research is evaluative, and from this research, modifications to care, or new patterns of care, are developed (Gaylord, 2007).

Although qualitative inquiry was introduced later into allied health care professions than nursing, similar areas of expertise are developing in these professions and, as equally important, are being incorporated into practice. Qualitative theories are providing frameworks for practice, enabling the identification of concepts particular to illness or to each profession, and qualitative meta-synthesis is enabling assessment of aggregated research, enhancing the understanding of caregiving (Fochsen, 2006).

Rarely do caregivers nurse individual patients; rather, they nurse families, including the sick person as well as his or her significant others. Qualitative researchers describe how family units respond to the threat of illness, assist each other when one member ...