Qualitative research in health studies: methodological reflections on the oral account and narrative technique in a study on the medical profession

Abstract

Qualitative research as applied to Public Health and Social Medicine is studied. The project is based upon research into the historical transformation of medical professional autonomy as medicine shifted from the "liberal" practice to recent "technological" medicine. Field research used unstructured recorded interviews to gather perssonal testimonies about the professional histories of physicians who graduated between 1930 and 1955. These testimonies are technically classified as "oral accounts" and were registered as free narratives. This study analysis how accounts can express the physicians' self-representations of their daily work and simultaneously write the history of medical practice. Further, the unstructured interview is evaluated as an instrument yielding free narratives and life accounts.