Laura L. Ellingson

Embodied Knowledge: Writing Researchers’ Bodies Into Qualitative Health Research

After more than a decade of postpositivist health care research and an increase in narrative writing practices, social scientific, qualitative health research remains largely disembodied. The erasure of researchers’ bodies from conventional accounts of research obscures the complexities of knowledge production and yields deceptively tidy accounts of research. Qualitative health research could benefit significantly from embodied writing that explores the discursive relationship between the body and the self and the semantic challenges of writing the body by incorporating bodily details and experiences into research accounts. Researchers can represent their bodies by incorporating autoethnographic narratives, drawing on all of their senses, interrogating the connections between their bodily signifiers and research processes, and experimenting with the semantics of self and body. The author illustrates opportunities for embodiment with excerpts from an ethnography of a geriatric oncology team and explores implications of embodied writing for the practice of qualitative health research.

Interdisciplinary Health Care Teamwork in the Clinic Backstage

A long-term ethnography of an interdisciplinary geriatric oncology team at a regional cancer center revealed the existence and importance of backstage communication that occurred outside of team meetings to the enactment of teamwork. Seven inductively derived categories describe the communication involved in backstage teamwork in the clinic: informal impression and information sharing; checking clinic progress; relationship building; space management; training students; handling interruptions; and formal reporting. The centrality of backstage communication to caring for patients is explored, and a view of embedded teamwork is proposed, extending upon the bona fide group construct. The study provides a valuable complement to controlled studies of group decision-making through its focus on dynamic communication outside of meetings among dyads and triads of team members in a web-like organization and extends bona fide group theory.

The Performance of Dialysis Care: Routinization and Adaptation on the Floor

Previous studies of communication in dialysis centers primarily focused on communication between nurses and patients. In this study, ethnographic methods were used to explore the dominant communication performances enacted by dialysis staff members, including registered nurses, patient care technicians, technical aides, a social worker, and a dietitian. Findings suggest a dialectic between extreme routinization of care and continual adaptation. The dominant routine involved repeating the same preparation, treatment, and discharge process 3 shifts per day, thrice weekly for each patient. At the same time, near-constant adjustments to scheduling, coordination of tasks, and problem solving were needed to maintain the performance of repetition. The balancing of this dialectic has significant implications for new staff training and socialization, understanding the role of technology and routine in dialysis and in health care systems more generally, and in further theorizing the role of unbounded communication interactions in health care.

Rearticulating the Aunt: Feminist Alternatives of Family, Care, and Kinship in Popular Performances of Aunting:

The aunt in contemporary Anglo-American culture is a deserving though oft-overlooked cultural identity for critical feminist analysis. This article examines selected performances of aunting in contemporary U.S. popular culture to illustrate how the cultural work of aunting articulates both dominant and transgressive constructions of family, care, kinship, and feminine agency. The quiet transgressions of popular aunt figures offer potent sites for progressive feminist rearticulations of family life and kinship relations.

“The truth must dazzle gradually” Enriching relationship research using a crystallization framework

Crystallization is a framework for conducting qualitative and multimethod research that offers significant potential for enriching relationship research. Complementing rigorous social science research with (integrated or separate) artistic representations of data enables researchers to render complex, nuanced accounts that serve multiple stakeholder audiences.

“Kind, Sensitive, and Above All, Honest”: Long-Term Cancer Survivors’ Quality of Life and Self-Advocacy

ABSTRACT Long-term survivors of cancer (LTS) are a growing population whose needs differ significantly from patients undergoing cancer treatment. Many LTS suffer from late effects of cancer treatments or symptoms that persist after treatment concludes or appear following remission. This study explored the relationship between LTS perceptions of quality of life with late effects and perceptions of patient self-advocacy through quantitative and qualitative analyses. A negative statistical relationship emerged between the variables. LTS median self-advocacy scores were quite high, reflecting their preference for health-care providers who listen actively, understand patient needs, are knowledgeable and compassionate, and utilize joint decision making.

Pictures, patience, and practicalities: lessons learned from using photovoice in applied communication contexts

ABSTRACT The unforeseen trials of arts-based research may suppress creative and innovative explorations. Photovoice, a visual method of investigation employing participatory photography, presents a host of apprehensions. Yet, photovoice is both a valid and rich methodology that can greatly expand the reach and scope of applied communication research. In this essay, we – three applied communication researchers – discuss the complexities of photovoice, highlighting areas of consideration that interested researchers should contemplate before utilizing this methodology. Briefly exploring three of our research studies and their varying topics (i.e. long-term cancer survivors, domestic violence organizational advocacy, male body culture), we discuss three broad areas of difficulty in photovoice research: analysis, control, and exposure. Despite the unique obstacles that photovoice presents, we argue that it, along with other forms of arts-based research, are profitable and definitely worth the challenge.

Embodied Practices in Dialysis Care: On (Para)Professional Work

Outpatient dialysis is both an intimate, life-sustaining procedure and a public performance of technological, routinized care. Informed by feminist theory and practice theory, this chapter illuminates ways in which tensions between caring for patients and exhibiting professionalism are negotiated by nurses and patient care technicians through their embodied workplace practices. This study is written as a ‘layered account’; that is, it alternate detailed ethnographic narratives and critical qualitative analysis. The chapter concludes with insights into how providers’ and patients’ practices collectively constitute dialysis care and offer implications for embodied practice theory and for improving quality of dialysis care.

Style, Substance, and Standpoint: A Feminist Critique of Bernie Siegel’s Rhetoric of Self-Healing

Using standpoint theory, the essay argues that Dr. Bernie Siegel’s self-healing rhetoric in three published self-help texts reflects the experience and perspective of the dominant social group and marginalizes members of less powerful groups. The problematic tension between the texts’ feminine rhetorical style and the dominant-group focus of the content is explored and its implications discussed.

Pedagogy of Laughter: Using Humor to Make Teaching and Learning More Fun and Effective

This chapter reviews current interdisciplinary scholarship to highlight some possibilities of using humor to enhance teaching and learning. Integrating into the university classroom respectful, appropriate humor uplifts and engages students, while avoiding hurtful or aggressive humor. Using personal examples from my own teaching career, I illustrate how humor can be used to help students to reflect on topics about which they may feel defensive or disinterested, to engage more enthusiastically with learning activities and exercises, and to foster open communication in the classroom.