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Paper short abstract:

Using rapid, multi-site, approaches to hospital ethnography presents a trade-off between the desire and need for time to be spent at the ethnographic site and with the data; meaning rapid, multi-site, hospital ethnography may lead to advancing breadth in knowledge, but not obtatining depth.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on my research conducted in antenatal clinics across London, I present a critique of rapid, multi-site, hospital ethnography. In doing so, I engage with concepts of methodological agility and research pragmatism as a social scientist engaging in ethnographic research conducted at and across the disciplinary boundaries of the social, psychological, and health sciences.

Firstly, I will discuss the issue surrounding multi-site ethnography, whereby cross-disciplinarity can become an issue where, as a non-clinician across multiple clinical settings can render the researcher an outsider, a stranger, an intruder even, thus demonstrating the need – as ethnographic researchers based in hospital settings – we must become methodologically agile, adapting to both our settings and our population(s) of interest.

Secondly, I present the issue surrounding rapid ethnography, which can be intrinsically problematic when working in healthcare systems which present inherently slow processing which can delay research, juxtaposed against a phenomenally high turnover of population (both patients and staff); thus, indicating the requirement – as hospital ethnographers – to become pragmatic researchers, adapting to both our limited time at each hospital site and their changing forms.

Finally, this chapter whilst wrestling with the concepts of methodological agility and research pragmatism acknowledges time as an important factor in ethnographic research as in all qualitative research. Time is problematised in these types of ethnographic approaches as being doubly constrained – first through the rapid approach and second due to the division of a researcher’s focus across multiple hospital sites.