Researching nursing practice: does person-centredness matter?

Person-centredness is common speak in nursing and health care literature. Increasingly there is an expectation that practitioners adopt person-centred principles in their practice and organizations are expected to respect the values of the service user. However, in the research methodology literature, there is little explicit attention paid to the concept of person-centredness in research practice. Instead, there continues to be a reliance on traditional 'ethical principles' to guide effectiveness in research work. This paper argues that the principles of person-centredness that are espoused in nursing practice should also underpin nursing and health care research. A framework for person-centred research is proposed and issues concerning its implementation in practice are discussed.