The busy professional life of a Health Professional rarely allows time to stop and review one’s life from a more holistic perspective. Retirement from clinical practice has given me this opportunity, but, in retrospect, such reflection could and should have been part of my daily practice and life.

Autoethnography is and emergent postmodern qualitative methodology, the word emerging from its Greek roots; auto-self, ethnos-culture, and graphy-writing. Chang (2008) describes autoethnography as being autobiographical in its content orientation, ethnographical in its methodological orientation, and cultural in its interpretative orientation.

An Autoethnography represents both the process and product of reflective and reflexive examination of one’s life. Autoethnographies are most often written in the first person.

One is a participant observer of one’s own life in the cultural context of interactions between self and others, both within communities of practice and in the other micro cultures of one’s life. Such activities provide insights in relation to the question “Who am I?”

This methodology allows one to tell and share stories, and to give other Health Professionals the opportunities to tell and share their stories, to explore meaning and allow for the possibility of personal transformation.

As Health Professionals we are far more than a Health Professionals.

Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as Method