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Video reflexive ethnography is a qualitative methodology that takes a positive approach to patient safety, highlighting existing strengths in the clinical practices of clinicians such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others. We need to identify and illuminate those strengths, those clinical practices because they’re part of the fabric of the safety net. If we only look at the holes in safety, we don’t see the fabric of the whole safety net.

Dr. Rick Iedema, one of the researchers who developed the video reflexive ethnography method, says that safety is produced by frontline clinicians and patients through their actions, deliberations, and learning. We can’t make advances in patient safety unless we examine what happens at the point of care, and who else really knows what happens there but the clinicians and the patients themselves?

Quantitative methods help show us where to look for gaps in patient safety, can highlight problems and their magnitude, and even help identify specific lapses in patient safety. But qualitative methods, including video reflexive ethnography, help us to look “under the hood” to get at not only the whats but the whys and the hows. The goal of qualitative research is oriented towards discovery and developing a holistic picture, with an emphasis on understanding processes and questioning underlying assumptions.

Stakeholders include anyone with an interest in promoting patient safety and preventing harms. Our membership includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, clinician as well as non-clinician researchers, and others. Our group is multi-disciplinary bringing together as many different perspectives as possible to increase the likelihood of finding solutions to preventable harms.