Treading softly while jumping through hoops: ethnographic adventures in pursuit of palliative medication work-as-done in hospice, hospital and at home

DR SALLY-ANNE FRANCIS & DR SARAH YARDLEY “I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” (W.B.Yeats) “A rapid, focused ethnography will be conducted using a cross-sectional approach,” we said. It sounds so neat and simple. Yet in this compact statement there are two parallel stories of navigating…

Reflecting on reflexivity: A practical example of reporting your reflexive practice

DR JESSICA REES As distinguished by Chiseri-Strater (1996) “to be reflective does not demand an ‘other,’ while to be reflexive demands both another and some self- conscious awareness of the process of self-scrutiny” (p. 130). If knowledge reflects the identity of its producers (Haraway, 1991) then it is important for researchers to acknowledge their influence…

Living with multiple health conditions in an East-London borough: early findings from a participatory photography project

ESCA VAN BLARIKOM Multimorbidity in the UK Historically, biomedicine focused on single disease categories. As a result, many of our current clinical guidelines are almost exclusively focused on managing single conditions. Considering that in the UK, people with multiple health conditions make up most primary healthcare encounters (Cassell et al. 2018), these approaches urgently require…

Rapid ethnographies in the NHS

STEPHANIE KUMPUNEN Long-form ethnography is a long-term investment…but rapid ethnography can help sometimes Traditional long-form ethnography on health and care services has proven essential to understanding the social and cultural aspects of illness and care provision. As a research approach for quality improvement, ethnography has been described as able to help us to identify conditions…