Khatijah Lim Abdullah
Nursing Sciences Unit,
Department of Allied health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine,
Universiti Malaya

Date: 26 October 2001
Time: 11.30-12.00
 

This work examines the application of ethnography as a research method in professional nursing practice. A particular piece of research is examined closely; it is an ethnography study used in a nursing environment : SAVAGE, J (1995) Nursing Intimacy. An ethnographic approach to nurse-patient interaction.
Fieldwork was carried out to contribute to this work by interviewing the researcher in order to assess the strengths and weakness inherent in the approach in practice. Other published work using ethnography is also cited and discussed in relation to particular aspects of this research method. Specifically the paper examines the methodology, sampling, strengths and weakness inherent in the approach.
Finally the author discusses the relevance of ethnography for nursing and concludes that, as a research method within the qualitative paradigm, it has a great deal to offer nursing as a humanist discipline.