You correctly pointed out why ethnography is the workable approach to studying culture and is suitable for exploring people’s interaction remotely or in a hospital setting. It is necessary to assess the influence of participants’ backgrounds and the methodologies used by the nurses to assist. You also stated that “one challenge of the research project is how to gather the mothers’ perspective on how their labor went.” Indeed, the expectations may not coincide with the actual conditions, or unexpected changes could influence labor (O’Brien et al., 2018). You were right by mentioning that qualitative research purposes and results might be perceived differently, but a detailed explanation of the design and solid theoretical background can help avoid misleading conclusions.
For instance, the alternative perspective to your research is to include a more specific condition, such as the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on mothers’ choice to deliver naturally. Adding questions to the interviews with the participants can add quantitative value to research as the number of positive and negative experiences would be analyzed (Boelig et al., 2020). Furthermore, there are specific guidelines for nursing personnel related to the pandemic, and their implications influence the decision-making about natural childbirth and the use of medication (Boelig et al., 2020). The grounded theory methodology would be appropriate for such a study because it will help describe social and cultural processes. I have experience studying cultural research necessary for particular decisions, and the more tests and statistical observations it includes, the more solid foundation for conclusions it develops. Based on the evidence and exploring similar scientific works, the suggestion can be to expand the study for retrieving additional evidence which can influence the original theory’s validity and reveal patterns that lead nurses to suggest natural childbirth or apply medication.
Studies exploring healthcare delivery practices for particular locations such as a large tertiary hospital in Jamaica are crucial for retrieving narrow and evidence-based recommendations for their unique conditions. You correctly selected phenomenological research and semi-structured interviewing as a method of gathering information because they will provide the most detailed results possible. Ranse et al. (2020) claim that “phenomenology is concerned with the essence of things as they are appearing in the conscious awareness of the first person” (p. 946). You mentioned the issues of that kind of qualitative study as “some participants may be reluctant to sign the informed consent, though they do not have a problem participating in the research.” Indeed, the individuals’ perception and biases towards scientific work might damage the entire process, and therefore maximized trustworthiness must be provided.
The alternative perspective for your research can be to structuring the information before it is gathered. The phenomenological methodology would obtain broad knowledge about nurses’ experiences and perceptions of their job and workplace. Consequently, setting several obligatory parts of interviews to retrieve specific information is necessary to further create a quality of care assessment strategy for the emergency department in a large tertiary hospital in Jamaica (Nelson & Cavanagh, 2018). Furthermore, nursing experiences in the given location can be studied through the participants’ perception of their work and overall environment (Nelson & Cavanagh, 2018). I explored narrow researches about the state I had an internship and concluded that such works are rare and include a few participants, yet provide a broad description of specific place operations. Evidence gathered from phenomenological research and my experience suggest you design interviews to help participants give information that could be well-structured during the analysis.
References
Boelig, R. C., Manuck, T., Oliver, E. A., Di Mascio, D., Saccone, G., Bellussi, F., & Berghella, V. (2020). Labor and delivery guidance for COVID-19. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM, 2(2), 100110.
Nelson, J. W., & Cavanagh, A. M. (2018). Development of an international tool to measure nurse job satisfaction by testing the Healthcare Environment Survey beyond Jamaica and the United States to Scotland: A cross sectional study utilizing exploratory factor analysis. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 11(4), 314-318.
O’Brien, L., Duong, J., Winterton, T., Haring, A., & Kuhlmann, Z. (2018). Management of hypertension on the labor and delivery unit: delivering care in the era of protocols and algorithms. The Permanente Journal, 22, 17-170.
Ranse, J., Arbon, P., Cusack, L., Shaban, R. Z., & Nicholls, D. (2020). Obtaining individual narratives and moving to an intersubjective lived-experience description: a way of doing phenomenology.Qualitative Research, 20(6), 945-959.