The phenomenological approach is increasingly being utilised as the method structure for nursing research studies. However, the nursing literature is beginning to reflect a concern with nurse researchers' adoption of phenomenological methods without, at the same time, laying the philosophical and methodological foundations on which the method is built. It is important for nursing knowledge development through research that the choice of research methodology can be argued for, and is judged to be coherent with, both the philosophical tone of the research and the nature of the research question. In this article the concepts underpinning Heidegger's interpretive phenomenological philosophy are examined and discussed in terms of the methodological insights they provide for the conduct of nursing phenomenological research.