Clinically applied medical ethnography: relevance to cultural competence in patient care

Medical anthropology provides an excellent resource for nursing research that is relevant to clinical nursing. By expanding the understanding of ethnographic research beyond ethnicity, nurses can conduct research that explores patient's constructions and explanatory models of health and healing and how they make meaning out of chronic conditions and negotiate daily life. These findings can have applicability to culturally competent care at both the organizational or systems level, as well as in the patient/provider encounter. Individual patient care can be improved by applying ethnographic research findings to build provider expertise and then using a cultural negotiation process for individualized patient care.