Epilogue: From 'should we be?' to 'how are we': moving forward with mixed methods health research

Mixed methods research, with the combination of qualitative and quantitative data, seems a logical mirror to the type of clinical information being collected and used in contemporary health care. For centuries health practitioners have used multiple sources of evidence to guide their decision-making about patients' problems and how to manage them. Practitioners collect narrative from patients - their stories, perceptions and attitudes about a health issue - and marry this information with evidence from standardised clinical measures to diagnose, treat and care for those who present to them with a health issue. While it could be argued that there is no true simple health problem, the changing demographics of the population, including the increasing lifespan and the rise in chronic disease, have greatly increased the complexity of health issues. Many people accessing health care facilities today have multiple comorbidities in conjunction with their primary presenting problem (Brayne, Matthews, McGee, & Jagger, 2001; Broemeling, Watson, & Prebtani, 2008; Zhang, Vitry, Ryan, & Gilbert, 2010). In addition to the presenting clinical problem and comorbidities, health care workers often need to manage the social, economic and personal context of the individual. Achieving this often requires the development of interdisciplinary partnerships between health professionals. Hence the complexity of health problems and health teams aptly support the need for multiple data sources when researching health issues. It is not surprising, therefore, that mixed methods is an increasing method of choice for research in health discipline