Using ethnographic methods in the analysis of work processes: the case of the administrative staff work in a hospital out-patients department

Abstract

The article presents the most outstanding elements of the methodological design carried out in a research aiming at the identification and analysis of work processes in the area of specialty consults in a Catalan hospital. The design is presented as a result of the theoretical presuppositions of the research and as a response to the complexity of the object of research. More concretely, the article vindicates the combined use of different methods for collecting data. It is argued that this combined use of methods —specially of different kinds of observation that differ in their degree of construction, kind of data logging and level of interaction with the people observed— contributed to enhance our approach and the results of the whole process of research.