Grounded Theory In Clinical Practice

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In clinical practice it is recognised that is some areas such as Mental health, Critical care and Burn services that staff are exposed to high level of psychological stress (Myhren, Ekeberg, and Stokland 2013). This paper will describe how a Grounded theory methodology could be used to answer the research question. In order to demonstrate why Grounded theory would be a suitable methodology to investigate this issue, the author will describe the background to Grounded theory, the different “schools” within the Methodology and key differences of how Grounded theory is used.
Grounded theory
Grounded theory can be defined as the inductive and systematic generation of theory from data (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Two sociological researchers, Barney Glaser and Anslem Strauss, originally described the discovery grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Their original work, into the social contexts and beliefs of the dying and their carers, developed into a technique in which they described developing theory from research as opposed to the dominant and traditional positivist philosophy of theory guiding the research. Since the
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Glaser describes the methodology as a general method, which cannot be mixed with other forms of qualitative methodology such as phenomenology or ethnography to satisfactorily develop Formal theory (Glaser 1998). Charmaz argues that Ethnographic research can be complemented by analysis using grounded theory and also that as part of a mixed methodology it can be highly successful (Charmaz 2014).
The methodology can be applied to both quantitative and qualitative data (Glaser 1998). This was Glaser’s main rebuttal to others who had taken the core tenants of Grounded theory as originally described (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and developed different methods of analysis such as Strauss, Corbin and Charmaz (Strauss and Corbin 1998, Charmaz 2014).

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