Description:
<jats:p>• This paper considers methodological and philosophical issues that arose during a multi‐centre, randomized controlled trial of a new nursing intervention to manage breathlessness with patients with primary lung cancer.</jats:p><jats:p>• Despite including a diverse range of instruments to measure the effects of the intervention, the uniqueness of individuals’ experiences of breathlessness were often hidden by a requirement to frame the study within a reductionist research approach.</jats:p><jats:p>• Evidence from the study suggests that breathlessness is only partly defined when understood and explored within a bio‐medical framework, and that effective therapy can only be achieved once the nature and impact of breathlessness have been understood from the perspective of the individual experiencing it.</jats:p><jats:p>• We conclude that to work therapeutically we need to know how patients interpret their illness and its resultant problems and that this demands methodological creativity.</jats:p>