 Based on fieldwork in a variety of medical settings in the United States, Belgium, and Zaire, her ethnographic work examines chronic and terminal illness, medical research, therapeutic innovation, medical education and socialization, and bio-ethics.Her work not only considered medical practice but also medical research, patient experiences and the nature of uncertainty for patients and healers.Out of this work grew her interests in medical education as well as medical ethics, a field she engaged some years before there was such a thing as Bioethics.