This article aimed to make clear understanding about ethnography as a nursing research method. Ethnography is a research process of learning about people by learning from them. This approach is used by investors to understand and describe why a group of people do what they do. In other words, ethnography is a culture to study culture.
Thus, culture is a core concept of ethnography. This approach based on wholistic view of culture, cultural relativism, indigenous and analytic concept of behavior, and comparative view of culture. Ethnography has many research traditions as to the cultural view and specific method: wholistic ethnography, ethnoscience, ethnograpy of communication, or critical ethnography. Notwithstanding such differences, the ethnographic traditions do share many common features. They grounded in a commitment to the first-hand experience and exploration of a particular social or cultural setting on the basis of participant observation. During the inquiring process, an ethnographer create a research design, participate and discover the experiences of a people in the field, explain their experiences, and make text with the indigenous concept of native people and analytic concept of ethnographer. In many clinical field of nursing, whether it is consisted of diverse ethnic group or not, there are cultural differences between client and nurse. If this cultural difference or conflicts are not solved, the efficacy of nursing practice cant be secured. Ethnograpy can served to construct a bridge over the cultural gap between client and nurse.
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