This paper takes the stance that although there are many different approaches to phenomenological and hermeneutic research, some of these have become blurred due to multiple interpretations of translated materials. Working from original texts by the German philosophers, this paper reconsiders the relevance of phenomenology and hermeneutics to nursing research. We trace the development of Gadamer's philosophy in order to propose a research method based in this tradition. Five steps have been identified as a guide for nurse researchers. These are deciding upon a question, identification of preunderstandings, gaining understanding through dialogue with participants, gaining understanding through dialogue with text and establishing trustworthiness.

The results confirm that illness perceptions are associated with quality of life in muscle disease and suggest that they also influence mood. The addition of optimism and coping variables into the analysis yielded small increases in the proportions of variance in quality of life and mood which were explained. These results have implications for the composition of future psychological interventions.

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Although pre-registration nursing in the United Kingdom (UK) is moving towards a graduate exit, the vocational/professional debate is still live and continues to be played out in both popular and professional literature. This study considers the nature of contemporary academic communities and the challenge of duality in professional nursing life. More than a decade after the move into higher education (HE) however the role of the academic is still controversial, with much of the debate focussed on the nature of clinical credibility. This article considers the dimensions of academic nursing, reports the views of academics and clinicians and introduces a model of working that could potentially harness and blend the skills of academics and clinicians, nurturing a culture of applied scholarship throughout the professional/academic journey.