Donna Frost

The critical creative collaborative inquiries in action 141 5 Floortje: Yes, now, that’s not focused is it? It [the spiral] is kind of never ending. It goes on and on, is open ended. And in my idea of professional artistry, part of it is open, but part of it is also having focus, being able to focus and identify the things that need focusing on. Knowing when to stop – and get pointy as it were! (RNI-Mtg 9 -Rec 3 of 6 ) This excerpt illustrates a number of things. Firstly, how the image of the spiral and the image of the star were used, by setting them off against each other, to help clarify certain aspects of our understandings of professional artistry. It is possible that both messages could be found in both images, but the point of the dialogue and working with the metaphors was to bring the nuances of the different interpretations out into the open and to help us explain to each other what we meant, what our understandings were. Further, this excerpt shows that we had become more skilled, as a group, in moving backwards and forwards between the creative and cognitive aspects of our understandings and that our understandings of professional artistry had deepened. Floortje points out specifically what different parts of her painting represent; Jane asks questions about how the star should be seen in relation to the nursing encounter; I ask a question about the relationship between the two images. Floortje responds in each case with an answer in which she moves easily between the symbol and her understandings of professional artistry. Thirdly, this example shows our agreed ways of working in action: we had agreed that when working on creative expressions collaboratively, and in silence, we would get non-verbal consent from each other to add to something that someone else had done, for example via a look and a nod. Floortje checks that she had understood this correctly before explaining her addition of the star to my painting of the spiral. Finally, this exchange illustrates that we were, at this stage in the RNI, co-inquirers, with room to question or add to all contributions, no matter who had introduced them. Nurse practitioner inquiry group The nurse practitioner inquiry (NPI) was formed after the process described in Chapter 4 and consisted of seven NPs working in diverse clinical settings in the province of Zuid Holland in The Netherlands, and myself. The NPs were each valued in their context for their clinical expertise and all self-selected to participate in the inquiry group because they were interested in developing the less tangible aspects of their nursing practice. Although their participation in the NPI was not