Interpreting phenomenology for nursing research

Originally there were few things about which I was clear in relation to my research. I was interested in the nurse-patient relationship in a clinical setting and I wanted to examine especially 'ordinariness in nursing' ( 1 ), a phenomenon I had noticed in my own practice. It was the nature of this ordinariness that I most wanted to define, so phenomenology, which appeared to deal with the assumptions of getting to know more about a particular phenomenon, seemed to be an appropriate approach. Eventually I was able to develop and defend the use of my own research method, which combined the contextual features of the research setting, some assumptions of the underlying methodology, and my sense of myself as a 'Being-in-the-world'.