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Purpose Resilience in healthcare is fundamental for what constitutes quality in healthcare. To understand healthcare resilience, resilience research needs a multilevel perspective, diverse research designs, and taking advantage of different data sources. However, approaching resilience researchers as a data source is a new approach within this field and needs careful consideration to ensure that research is trustworthy and ethically sound. The aim of this short “backstage” general review paper is to give a snapshot of how the Resilience in Healthcare (RiH) research program identified and dealt with potential methodological and ethical challenges in researching researcher colleagues. Design/methodology/approach The authors first provide an overview of the main challenges and benefits from the literature on researching researcher colleagues. Second, the authors demonstrate how this literature was used to guide strategies and principles adopted in the RiH research process. Findings The paper describes established principles and a checklist for data collection and analysis to overcome potential dilemmas and challenges to ensure trustworthiness and transparency in the process. Originality/value Mining the knowledge and experience of resilience researchers is fundamental for taking the research field to the next step, and furthermore an approach that is relevant across different research fields. This paper provides guidance on how other research projects can approach researcher colleagues in similar ways to gain new insight, build theory and advance their research field based on insider competence.