[The qualitative approach in health: an alternative to clinical research in rheumatic diseases].

Qualitative research in a clinical environment is an alternative in the study of the complexity of rheumatic diseases and takes patients' perspectives and their cultural contexts, as well as the biomedical system, into account. Given that the main objective of this type of research is to provide information on what a given disease means to patients and their families, it is complementary to the experimental and quantitative studies that prevail in the present clinical setting. The process of qualitative research differs from that of other approaches in the data obtained and their analysis. This type of research is used in many different settings of clinical medicine, ranging from epidemiological to clinical ethics studies.