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In health services research, Sobo (2009, p. 211) is more often a participating observer than an observing participant, but she emphasizes a sentiment all participant observers would embrace: “There is no substitute for being there.” Barrett (2008) distinguishes between two major kinds of participant observation in his ethnography of Aghor medicine. The first is “the classic form of ‘active participation’ in which the ethnographer increasingly engages in the distinctive behaviors of his or her informants in order to better understand those behaviors in their appropriate cultural context” (p. 14). The second drew on Barrett’s previous clinical experience as a registered nurse and volunteer at clinics in his field site. Barrett wasn’t engaged in these roles during his research, as is typical in active participant observation; rather he used participation in relevant contexts as a framework for making sense of ethnographic observations. Strong (2020), by contrast, “participated in nearly all aspects of the life of the hospital” in the Rukwa region of Tanzania where she studied maternal mortality and the ethics of care (p. 17).