Donna Frost

Nature of professional artistry 187 6 into finding out how the patient or family member understood the current moment, and helped bring the perspectives together. Helping the patient to articulate his own understandings, for example, made it possible for the nurse to use aspects of the patient’s language when placing the immediate experiences in the larger picture. The images and phrases used to describe this pattern throughout the study included having a bird’s eye view, helicopter-ing, magnifying glass, binoculars, humming bird, sailing in and out, ‘short-stay, long-stay’ association card, a hawk gliding and diving, a focus point of vivid colour with the same, less bright colour fanning out around, a network or web with bright spots of focus, and a spotlight. For example: This helicopter here shows the impression I got of you [Lilian] hovering over the situation. You had a spotlight which you shone on particular issues. (DylanNPI-Mtg 7 -Rec 1 of 4 ) Figure 6 . 4 shows examples of phrases noted in field notes while NP inquiry members were observing each other in a variety of practice situations, as well as parts of a creative expression made, by the observer, in response to a particular practice episode. The association card (Stokes, 2011 ) shown on the right of the figure was chosen by Aafje, the observer-inquirer, and shows a field of flowers forming the background or the ‘whole’. There are craft objects placed in the foreground symbolizing the aspects of the encounter that Wendy, the practitioner- inquirer, seemed to be focussing on at that moment. During the critical reflective conversation Wendy took up some of the craft material originally placed by Aafje and made the flower in the smaller picture at the left of the figure. She said: ‘ …and the more I focused in on one thing, the more I was able to see the different layers within that aspect ’ (WendyNPI-CRC- 20140624 -Rec 2 of 3 -p 3 ).