This article re-examines insider-outsider relationships in nursing ethnographies of healthcare settings as a case study in the wider sociological debate around reflexivity in field research. It focuses on the practices through which the fieldwork role is accomplished and the "identity work" of nurse ethnographers. Insights derived from ethnomethodology are utilized in order to analyse selected aspects of real-life field experiences in order to enhance our understanding of this relatively neglected dimension of the research process. The article is offered as a contribution to an emerging body of scholarship that is directed at promoting a more rigorous and theoretically informed understanding of the conduct and reportage of ethnographic fieldwork.