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Ethical conduct and the nurse ethnographer: consideration of an ethic of care

Abstract During an ethnographic study of an Acute Medical Admissions Unit, informed consent was not obtained from some patient informants despite research proposals to various research committees stating that it would. The ethical judgement was made that not to seek informed consent was in the best interests of patients who were very ill or distressed and that to insist on informed consent would have been potentially harmful to these patients. Drawing on my experiences of collecting data whilst holding the dual roles of researcher and nurse, I argue that contextual moral judgements can enhance ethical decisions in the field and further that rigid adherence to formal bio-medical ethical guidance can lead to inappropriate ethical actions. Importantly, the ethnographer must be able to articulate arguments that reflect the contextual nature of ethical decision-making to powerful gatekeepers, such as research committees. If this does not happen then challenges to the dominance of deontological-rationalist ethics will not occur and researchers may be drawn to the use of less ethically demanding data collection methods. Drawing on insights from literature that considers feminist ethics, and in particular the concept of an ethic of care, justification for my ethical conduct whilst in the field is presented.