'From the space between us': The use of poetics as a hermeneutic phenomenological tool within qualitative physiotherapy research

People make meaning of their experiences in conversation with other people and poetic phrases within such dialogue can offer a means of coming to a deeper understanding of those personal meanings. In a hermeneutic phenomenological study of community-based physiotherapeutic relationships, generated and derived poetry was used within the research process as a means to aid reflection about the research and the primary researcher's continuing clinical practice in community-based physiotherapy. Poetics became part of the hermeneutic research process, articulating the primary practitioner-researcher's role in the research, facilitating data analysis and assisting presentation of phenomenological findings. Such pragmatic development of poetics provided intellectual momentum, assisting movement of the research findings from the local context of community-based physiotherapy towards wider issues of societal concern.