Donna Frost

Design and methods 105 4 Shared inquiry experiences Shared experiences in clinical practice, summarised in section B of Table 4 . 1 , most often consisted of a practice situation in which one member of the inquiry group, in the role of practitioner, was observed by another member of the inquiry group, in the role of observer, during a clinical encounter with a resident, patient, client or family member. In order for observation of the practice experience to be feasible the episode had to have been identified and set up before time. Periods of observation generally lasted for between 10 and 20 minutes, and permission from the other party, for example the patient, had been asked and given before the encounter began. Other forms of shared experiences in practice were observations made of conversations with colleagues or students. The practitioner-inquirer was ‘doing their job’ as a registered nurse or nurse practitioner during these encounters and made, therefore, no written or spoken record during the practice encounter. The observer-inquirer often made field-notes, or wrote key words or short remarks and observations on post-it notes. Sometimes the observer-inquirer made no notes and just focused on immersing themselves in the experience as it was happening. Another form of shared inquiry experiences in practice were several episodes of participant observation engaged in during the RN inquiry. During these episodes I worked with some members of the RN inquiry group in practice, and we recorded our responses to the episode later, using creative expression or in audio-recorded dialogue or both. Individual inquiry experiences There were also data generated in practice by individual inquirers alone. Examples of this are conversations with colleagues, students, clients or their family members, or individual reflections made after particular practice moments that seemed, afterwards, significant or relevant for the CCCI in some way. For example, during one of the NP inquiry cycles we were investigating our experience of professional artistry in those practice situations in which the practitioner did not achieve their goals or otherwise felt that the encounter did not go well. These kinds of practice situations were not amenable to planning and so the experiential data within that cycle was largely generated in the form of individual reflections after the fact. Written reflections were either typed or hand-written, as a way of looking back on or mulling over a practice episode or ideas taking place within the inquiry, examining assumptions or as a way of processing or keeping track of ideas and thoughts about the research. The reflections sometimes followed a particular structure, for example