Husserlian phenomenology in Korean nursing research: analysis, problems, and suggestions

PURPOSE: This paper is a critical review of the descriptive phenomenological methodology in Korean nursing research. We propose constructive suggestions for the improvement of descriptive phenomenological methodology in light of Husserl’s phenomenological approaches. METHODS: Using the keywords of ‘phenomenology,’ ‘experience,’ and ‘nursing,’ we identify and analyze 64 Korean empirical phenomenological studies (selected from 282 studies) published in 14 Korean nursing journals from 2005 to 2018. The PubMed and the Korea Citation Index were used to identify the studies. RESULTS: Our analysis shows that all the reviewed articles used Giorgi’s or Colaizzi’s scientific phenomenological methodology, without critical attention to Husserl’s philosophical phenomenological principles. CONCLUSION: The use of scientific phenomenology in nursing research, which originated in North America, has become a global phenomenon, and Korean phenomenological nursing research has faithfully followed this scholarly trend. This paper argues that greater integration of Husserlian phenomenological principles into scientific phenomenological methodology in nursing research, such as participant-centered bracketing and eidetic reduction, is needed to ensure that scientific phenomenology lives up to its promise as a research methodology.