ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses and assesses the way phenomenology has been used within nursing. It points to three challenges that current nursing research and practice are confronted with when engaging successfully with phenomenology, the challenges of being too superficial, too philosophical, and too insular, and suggests that the best way to use phenomenology in a non-philosophical context is to be pragmatic: To qualify as good phenomenological research, the phenomenological tools being employed must show their pertinence, and must make a valuable difference. We should assess the value of the procedure on the basis of the results it delivers, and not on the basis of its orthodoxy or purity.
