Keywords : Institutional ethnography — Perinatal nursing — Preterm labor — Women’s experiences — Women ’ s work
threat of preterm labor. Institutional ethnography is a feminist methodology ( Smith, 1987, 1999, 2005 ) that attempts to identify invisible forms of work and explore the social organization of experience. The primary goal for this inquiry was not to describe women ’ s preterm labor experiences correctly or once and for all but to develop a more complex understanding of the work these women do and to explore how these women's experiences are organized by and for them.