Engaging students and faculty with diverse first-person experiences: use of an interpretive research group.

This article is about a teaching strategy that operationalizes an aspect of the National League for Nurses' position statement "Transforming Nursing Education" and the Institute of Medicine's report "Crossing the Quality Chasm." Engaging students with patients' first-person experiences related to health and illness and their experiences with health care can help students learn about the multiplicity of views on experience, help them focus on the patient as an individual, and heed the call for more patient-centered care. This article describes how an interpretive research group can be used to develop these skills by teaching undergraduate nursing students, in a caring, open environment, what life is like from the patient's perspective.