SARAH YARDLEY Instead of trying to construct healthcare systems that don’t rely on people knowing each other, our energies would be better spent focused on creating mechanisms that facilitate relational working through equitable opportunities for people to connect with each other. I wonder what your reaction to reading the above statement is? By people, I…
Tag: NHS
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…
Early Career Ethnographers of the NHS: Series Introduction
REBECCA IRONS Social Science and Humanities research with and on the NHS has never been more urgent than in a post-pandemic context. However, interdisciplinary collaboration with health services presents particular issues ranging from practicalities of access to expectations and differing disciplinary approaches between the clinical and the social/humanities. Being a long-time Latin Americanist myself, I…
Biosocial Rehabilitation and Building Futures During the Global Pandemic
CATHERINE BORRA For healthcare workers transitioning into new roles to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, there is not much time left to think. Some of us haven’t been on the wards for years, our specialties leading us to explore different corners of health not even remotely related to infectious disease. Yet recent events have led…