Categorising the nurse-researcher during fieldwork: ‘one of us’ or ‘one of them’?

Many nurse-researchers have considered the question of whether to ‘help out’ with clinical work while undertaking fieldwork. In this study, the nurse-researcher did not ‘help out’ and also positioned herself in an unassuming way. This produced some striking responses from nurse-participants. During the handover she became ‘one of us’ nurses, however, at the bedside the nurses struggled to designate her. Sitting on their group border, they worked either to bring her back into the group as ‘one of us’ or push her off the border to become ‘one of them’. Either way, they moved quickly to categorise this unknown presence in their midst. This categorisation, we argue, was a discursive formation in response to anxiety and illustrates how anxiety continues to function as an organising principle in nursing. The findings have implications for nurse-researchers undertaking fieldwork with hospital nurses, in relation to the question of their position in the field.