Qualitative research in health care practice: Challenges of methodology and implementation

Project summary The Nordic Interdisciplinary Conference on Qualitative Methods in the Service of Health conference is a bi-annual event that has been held in the Nordic countries since its launch in 2001. The Department of Health Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger has accepted the invitation to host the conference next year in May, 2008. A major issue within qualitative research concerns its implementation in healthcare practice. It therefore seems to be a need to devot e greater efforts to gaining knowledge about how to utilize qualitative research results and consequently apply research evidence to healthcare practice. There is also a need for a Nordic platform for continuous interdisciplinary qualitative and methodolo gical discussions within the area of health. The conference in Stavanger will strengthen the use of qualitative research in this area, and it is planned to establish contacts for research collaboration nationally and internationally. The proceeding confer ence will accordingly address the challenges of methodology and implementation of qualitative research in the healthcare practice. We would like to invite researchers in the healthcare field to present papers or posters, preferably in English, in which different qualitative perspectives are applied and where the path from theory to healthcare practice is questioned and problematized. We have entered into contact with six keynote speakers; all of whom are interested in the importance and the complexity o f implementing qualitative research findings. The conference venue will be located at the Department of Health Studies, University of Stavanger. Preliminary hotel reservations are made at the Clarion Hotel in the centre of Stavanger, and a preliminary con ference programme is presented in the project plan. The conference will not deal with any environmental consequences or apply any specific gender restrictions.