Stark realities

For many healthcare professionals and communication agencies the behaviours and experiences of patients often remain unseen, while the culture and context is overlooked. Campaigns that gain insight into these blind spots can change perceptions and shape communication strategies.

In a suburban neighbourhood in Düsseldorf a lawyer in his mid-thirties excuses himself while repairing his bike in the garden. “I will have to answer the call of nature behind my garage,” he says before disappearing out of sight. The toilet in his house is only about 30 feet away, but because of his overactive bladder condition he’s not confident he will make it. “Imagine what my neighbours must think?” he asks.

In Nashville, Tennessee, a 70-year-old woman with severe asthma drives to a local coffee shop to meet friends. She has a coughing attack while reversing into a parking space. She hits the brakes and frantically searches her handbag for a kitchen roll which she carries to wipe her mouth. “The sputum grosses me out. It’s worse than the breathlessness, it’s just embarrassing,” she admits.

These examples provided compelling real-life insights – challenging a creative agency’s preconceptions and shifting its understanding of what it must be like for patients with these conditions. It also provided educational video content to show healthcare professionals behaviours they hadn’t seen before.

Wider society

Ethnography has its roots in social anthropology. It is the way anthropologists do research. The emphasis is on observation, making sense of what people see themselves doing, why they are doing it and how these norms are influenced by cultural context.

Ethnographers pack a bag and a camera, immersing themselves in the world of patients for a few days and experiencing their lives in the process. Ethnographic film-making is guided by three main principles:

• Empathy. Ethnography relies on interpersonal skills to gain intimate access. It starts by being a good listener. Good listeners are good learners and are quick at picking up new questions, identifying what patients aren’t talking about and examining all of this with them
• Exploration. Ethnographers explore context. They go where people live. That is why ethnography is carried out in the real world – home, on the go, during the weekday, during the weekend – not just in a studio
• Expertise. They treat patients as experts and work around their needs. The challenge is in knowing how to make people with a condition feel comfortable and allow them to return to their normal sense of self. Being filmed can be tiring for patients – particularly those whose energy levels are compromised. Good ethnographic filmmakers respect people’s limitations and plan around this.

Inspiring and educating

Not only will such insights and stories make your communications to patients far more relevant and empathetic, they can also make any activity aimed at healthcare professionals more engaging.

Close working with ethnographers can make best use of these insights and patient stories to develop a strategy that informs everything you do, including digital activity, salesforce materials, meetings with key opinion leaders, conference material, exhibitions and PR.

The task then is to get everyone aligned and fully aware of the panoramic benefits.

Nick Leon is the founder of ethnographic research and filmmaking agency Naked Eye. Go to nakedeye.london