Patients as ethnographers

I recently spent 2 weeks as an inpatient on a hospital ward. It was not an experience I would have chosen, but I had several advantages by comparison with many of the other patients. I was ambulant for most of the time. As a doctor, I was able to understand many of the technical details of my condition and its treatment. By a strange coincidence, a colleague and friend of mine was also admitted to the same ward a few days after me, so we could support each other. As we are both involved professionally in healthcare education and organisational development, we were able to exchange our reflections on what was going on around us, including the way that the patients, nurses, doctors and other staff interacted with one another. During one of our conversations on the ward, I came up with the playful idea that we could raise our...
Source: Postgraduate Medical Journal - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: On reflection Source Type: research