Reflections and Guidance on Using Ethnographic Approaches in Health and Care Research – Ten Researcher’s Diverse Insights

Abstract

Ethnographic approaches to health and care research are invaluable. They offer rich insight into contextual and cultural factors that influence the health service, as well as the delivery of care within any given community, and recognise the centrality of the researcher in the process. Understanding the unfolding of real-life events, as well as interactions between people, space, technology and other affordances, is crucial to developing impactful and contextually sensitive interventions. Information derived from ethnography may also be unreachable by other, retrospective research approaches. By combining a collection of ten researchers’ diverse first-hand experiences relating to past studies, with collaborative reflections on conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues pertaining to ethnographic inquiry in health and care research, this paper offers a unique, accessible and revealing ‘backstage’ introduction to ethnographic approaches. It aims to de-mystify ethnography and prepare researchers planning to adopt ethnographic approaches to health research, by describing how it can look and feel in practice with empirical illustrations. This is perhaps particularly valuable for researchers new to ethnographic approaches across disciplines and expertise levels (e.g., clinical researchers and PhD students), as well as any stakeholder who may wish to be involved, or support such work in health and care settings.