This chapter presents an overview of the state of the art ethnographies conducted by nurses and highlights a few works by the early generation. An extensive search of the literature was conducted to identify ethnographies completed by nurses. Nursing knowledge was a common thread throughout the literature reviewed. The literature review revealed the progress nursing is making in recognizing this gap and attempting to close it. Nursing knowledge is essential in patient care. Using the ethnographic method of inquiry, nurses have been able to identify areas of need both in knowledge and practice and make recommendations for enhanced practice. Caring and patient advocacy were other common themes in the literature. Caring is the essence of nursing and consequently should be incorporated in nursing research. The common purpose of the ethnographic studies reviewed was to explain or understand a phenomenon to increase nursing knowledge.

This chapter describes the author’s dissertation research, and much of the content herein comes directly and verbatim from his dissertation. Qualitative inquiry honors the subjective nature of reality, and the many meanings that may be inherent in a particular phenomenon or experience. The social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, with its focus on the intersubjectivity of the social world, provided an interpretive framework for considering the experiences of African American parents in their children’s health care encounters. The chapter discusses the nuts and bolts of the study—the sample, the setting, institutional review board (IRB), instrumentation, data collection, and timeline—so the reader can see how conceptual and practical difficulties were resolved and the design became operational. It also discusses the analysis of data after they were generated within the Schutzian framework. Schutz’s social phenomenology is particularly appropriate for nursing, and is perhaps underutilized.

From Germany, the phenomenological movement moved to France through the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Husserl’s form of phenomenology is considered descriptive or eidetic and is described as the science of the essence of consciousness or an inquiry into the consciousness of the researcher. According to Spiegelberg, a more common feature of phenomenology than some others was its method, and though none of the early phenomenologists elaborated a system of rules for their methodological procedures, Spiegelberg formulated a method from their philosophies. While the need for criteria to evaluate the rigor and merit of phenomenological research is seen as critical, specific strategies for assuring, adhering to, and verifying rigor in phenomenological research continue to be the subject of debate. Throughout the explication of phenomenological methods, an area that remains somewhat invisible is the notion of recruitment of participants and the development of rapport with them.

This chapter highlights some of the recent studies categorized according to focus, with special attention to those in which the study samples were patients or the general population, in which case they would be potential patients. Nursing students are a vulnerable population, but health conditions make selected students even more vulnerable. Health literacy is an important aspect of providing care, and there is a question about whether students are being prepared to provide health teaching to the extent that they should. The chapter includes a brief discussion of several studies that represent the populations of interest. Barss examined nurse educators’ clinical experience using the TRUST model for inclusive spiritual care. The TRUST model includes five domains that generate the acronym: traditions, reconciliation, understandings, searching, and teachers. The chapter presents a study that demonstrates the application of phenomenology to a core concept of nursing, caring.

This chapter provides general introduction to discourse analysis; presents history of discourse analysis as a method; introduces three main types of discourse analysis namely conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis (CDA), and narrative analysis; and discusses some of the practicalities involved in its use. Conversations between individuals are one of the cornerstones on which whole health care organizations exist, and analyzing these conversations is essential for understanding health care practice. CDA has been used in recent nursing research examining the organizational and caring context of nursing. Narrative analysis has been used in nursing research that has investigated, among many other topics, career choice in nursing, patient experiences of eating disorders, and the acceptability of nursing interventions. Discourse analysis has been criticized by some as lacking rigor because of the range of different approaches, focus on interpretation, and poor practice used by some in relation to the rigor of their analysis.

This chapter discusses the experiences of a nurse ethnographer from student to faculty. Ethnography is a specific form of fieldwork among an indigenous people with a culture and language totally foreign to the anthropologist. The major lesson that needs to be learned when doing ethnographic field research is that the researcher is not in control of the field site, the kind and amount of data to be collected, or even what will be done on any given day. For an ethnographer, participant observation is the basic method of data collection. Approval of a proposal can be based on an ignorance of cultural diversity. In addition, institutional review boards (IRBs) are not consistent in decisions across university departments. Nurse anthropologists were limited to presenting papers at invitational nursing research conferences, which were later compiled into research proceedings or anthropology journals.

Signs and symptoms are important aspects of health and illness that disrupt physical, mental, and social functioning. Whether the goal is to eliminate the symptom or to minimize the distress of the symptom experience, the Symptom Management Theory (SMT) provides a useful framework for organizing the relevant concepts for research and practice. This middle range theory serves to guide symptom assessment and treatment in nursing practice and to suggest questions and hypotheses for nursing research. The three essential concepts of the SMT are symptom experience, symptom management strategies, and outcomes, with a change in the status of the symptom being the key outcome of interest. Symptom experience is a simultaneous perception, evaluation, and response to a change in one’s usual feeling. Symptom management strategies are efforts to avert, delay, or minimize the symptom experience. Symptom outcomes are clear and measurable outcomes to assess before and after implementing an intervention strategy.