Ethical dilemmas in ethnographic research on end-of-life care

Ethnographic research on end-of-life care raises ethical dilemmas that merit explicit discussion. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Brazil, India and Indonesia as part of a comparative research project, this article examines a recurring ethical problem: the sensitivity of sharing or withholding diagnostic and prognostic knowledge when death is near. Such dilemmas overlap with those faced more broadly in medical anthropology, but the stakes are heightened when research participants have little time left and the researcher's decisions may affect how that time is spent. The article reflects on three fieldwork encounters in which researchers faced these tensions in different circumstances, and argues for the value of collective, team-based ethical deliberation before, during and after fieldwork. Open discussion of ethical dilemmas can help ethnographers of death and dying reflect on, decide on and sometimes simply sit with the challenges they encounter.