Does health research warrant the modification of qualitative methods?

N ow, this is an interesting question: Does the nature of the illness, and the hospital context in which qualitative health research is conducted, force us to adapt our qualitative methods to access the data we need? Can we send our students to courses taught by faculty from education or sociology—faculty with no knowledge of the clinical context or what it is like to conduct research with the ill—and have these students learn to do qualitative research to a level where they could function as qualitative health researchers? Is it adequate to know about illness and hospitals in a superficial sense—perhaps by being a patient ourselves rather than a health professional— to conduct qualitative research about illness, or must one actually be a clinician, a physician or a nurse, to function within the hospital, identify a meaningful question, or collect adequate data? In other words, I am asking, Are qualitative health research methods a subspecialty of qualitative inquiry? First, issues of privacy and access aside, I am not convinced that anyone can simply barge into a hospital , regardless of research preparation, and be able to conduct qualitative health research successfully without some knowledge of the sights, sounds, and smells associated with the ill. We know from the literature on the socialization of student nurses and physicians that encounters with those who are ill, those in pain, birthing, deformed, or dying, can be shocking enough to paralyze the unwitting observer. Second, we know that clinical contexts have their own behavioral norms that cannot be ignored, because, for instance, the successful conduct of a code relies on synchronized mechanisms/ interactions to save a life, and these may have serious consequences if the sequences are interrupted. We know that patients' privacy must be respected, and codes of conduct must be learned before access is granted to anyone, no matter what their agenda. We know that these codes of conduct must be ingrained and that book learning does not ensure adherence to those codes. We know that researchers may be affected by what they see and learn in hospitals, and must learn how to manage and debrief this acquired stress in a way that preserves confidentiality. These are concerns that affect the researcher directly along with his or her ability to conduct research. Simply being an excellent clinician, accustomed to the clinical context and socialized as a health professional , does not make …