Ethnography and family medicine: issues and overview

Abstract

Ethnography is a qualitative research model generally associated with anthropology. Ethnographic methods include inductively oriented strategies such as participant observation, structured interviews, and open-ended interviews. Issues in family medicine such as patient compliance, doctor-patient relationships, and patients' subjective experience of illness may be optimally studied with ethnography. Because it is inductive, ethnography is cognitively similar to clinical reasoning. Making use of ethnography provides family physicians with a greater array of research methods compatible with clinical practice.