Etnografia video-riflessiva: l’applicabilità di una tecnica creativa e collaborativa in un reparto di Terapia Intensiva Neonatale

This article discusses the use of a collaborative and creative research technique, video-reflective ethnography, and the use of visual methods to promote reflexivity in healthcare. To achieve this goal, we will briefly present video-reflective ethnography and, in particular, the applicability of reflexivity in the sociology of the health field. Finally, by discussing our research experience within a Neonatal Intensive Care and a Sub-Intensive Care Units located in the metropolitan area of Milan, we argue how researchers who want to employ this approach should abandon what Alvin Gouldner (1970) describes as 'methodological dualism', i.e. the faculty of ignoring the points of contact between the researcher and the subjects/objects of research, to seek a form of (precarious) balance between involvement and distance in the relationship with social actors, to allow health professionals and technicians to collaborate in the production of knowledge as an epistemic community.