MCL Blog
Welcome to the blog of the medical cultures lab (MCL), a community of scholars who work to understand the culture of medicine and advance health equity.
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IntroductionIn March 2022, I embarked on a journey to conduct ethnographic research via field work at multiple senior centers in my county. With a larger research team, I sought to understand the culture, values, and social environment of their setting. Our study, DiscernMC,…
Settling on a design for data collection and analysis is daunting for any qualitative researcher, especially those new to the field. There are books and other resources available to learn about qualitative research, but they often include jargon or assume background knowledge…
"The Host is inviting you to join Breakout Room: 3.” I noticed my hands had tensed up as I moused over to click “Join” and start my next Multiple Mini Interview. Medical schools use the MMI to interview applicants; each mini-interview lasts 6-8 minutes, and in each short…
People everywhere are pre-equipped to navigate and understand culture, including the culture of medicine. If you have been a patient, if you have helped a family member or a friend when they were a patient, or if you have provided professional care for a patient, you have…
Words matter. Speech acts. Utterances you may not even understand nevertheless can be powerful and cause harm due to misunderstanding. Yet, communication does not end with words alone. Bodies silently speak, inflecting a word in one way or another. Usage and situation cue…
As qualitative researchers, we usually start our research solo. We submit grants alone, recruit alone, and spend time in the field alone. We then analyze our data and publish our papers. This solitude allows for depth. But conducting qualitative research on our own does not allow…
Ethnographic fieldwork is an anthropological research method that involves interviews and participant-observation. It enables a researcher to spend in-depth time immersed in people’s daily lives to gain an understanding of a particular topic or issue. The anthropologist…
Where do we see culture in everyday life? How does culture affect individuals, interactions, and systems? How can we shift culture to reduce suffering and promote well-being? MCL member Sarah Garrett is a cultural sociologist working to understand and induce culture change in…
“The Importance of Narrative ” was born of frustration.Narrative, or qualitative, research can be rigorous, well cited, and influential. Researchers in medicine and health policy, however, generally prefer numbers to narrative. Their journals hesitate to publish…
In fall of 2020, I explained to a group of new sociology graduate students “what I do.” In these annual conversations, I often focus on my work as an ethnographer – a social scientist who observes people interacting in the real-world settings where life unfolds.In the past,…