Abstract

Invited keynote speaker, “Person-centred care and evidence-informed practice,” Winter summit of the European Academy of Nursing Science: What is the relationship between Person-Centred Healthare and Evidence-Informed Practice? Historically, there has been a tension between defenders of 'evidence-based' practice in medicine and healthcare, and defenders of patient-centred approaches. Fortunately, developments over a number of years in the EBM debate have led to an expanded conception of 'evidence', acknowledging the normative and socially situated nature of knowledge and evidence in health and social care. We are now able to recognise that there is no opposition between PCH and EIP. While some contributors still discuss the idea of “integrating” more forms of phenomenological and social evidence into EIP, others are recognising the need for the essential, scientific aspects of clinical reasoning to be subsumed within a broader, humanistic understanding of clinical reasoning. As numerous examples illustrate, this broader conception of reasoning presents greater opportunities for such important ideas as patient expertise and epistemic injustice to be incorporated into our understanding of the current problems for health practice, and to develop imaginative solutions to them.