Abstract

LANDEROS-OLVERA, Erick; MORALES-RODRIGUEZ, María Claudia  and  MARTINEZ-REYES, María del Carmen. Health and nursing ethnographic method. Index Enferm [online]. 2010, vol.19, n.2-3, pp.187-190. ISSN 1699-5988.

Ethnography initiates as a method anthropology uses to approach cultural groups detached from the researcher. It starts from the qualitative paradigm to understand health phenomena subjectivity, aiming to complement the quantitative research traditional method. Since university upbringing, nursing students perform field work, and during their practice already as professionals, it is common the contact with the environmental reality of the people who suffer some illness; "the ethnographer is in the place of the facts". Since nursing has the health personnel who spent more time in contact with patients, it is recognized that the relation strictly clinical relation boundary between a nurse and a patient is surpassed by the daily coexistence, and this makes the nurse to be in touch with those matters not measurable within the health and illness process and allows information to flow and to obtain evidence for care. The purpose of this essay is to show the ethnography basis as a research field that nursing can use and develop to contribute relevant knowledge in understanding health conducts of different human groups. Ethnography background and characteristics and the methodology will be approached, as well as its relation with health and nursing sciences.

Keywords : Ethnography; Nursing; Sciences.