Donna Frost

Nature of professional artistry 191 6 sometimes even outpouring of grief, frustration or pain. There was certainly a comforting presence and a sense of ‘being with’, sometimes it almost felt tangible, but it was not generally a ‘there, there, you let it out’ kind of presence. For example, Anna, the practitioner-inquirer in the next illustration, let the silence linger during an encounterwith her patient, Mrs M, for long after Pieter, the observer- inquirer, began to feel uncomfortable. She let the silence continue until the patient burst into tears. Anna ‘saw’ the tears, acknowledged the patient’s emotion, and encouraged the patient to begin to speak more honestly about the impact of breast cancer on her daily coping and her concerns for the future. Afterwards Anna said: ‘I knew it was there, all that mess and stress, the pain and worry. It is eating away at her. But it kept getting made light of, or being glossed over. So I asked about it, and when Mrs M. didn’t really answer me, she said something about everything being for a season, I said, I pointed out that she had not actually answered the question and I asked it again […] and then I just let the question do its work. I think she had not really even heard the question properly before that time. But now she heard it. And I saw that it was working and that I should remain quiet. I could see – you could too I think [but Pieter hadn’t seen it] that I needed to let her digest it, mull it over. The tears showed me that she had let it in. Acknowledged the pain and worry you know. Acknowledged what all this is doing with her. From there it all went as if of its own accord really. The conversation became really real. Yes. (AnnaNPI-CRC- 20130823 -p 2 - 3 ) Anna did not know the answer to the problem the patient was facing but had faith in the capacity of the patient to come to new insights. She started where the patient was and did not push her into another space. She facilitated and supported the patient to experience the ‘now’ fully and that experience opened up possibilities for the not yet. Within the NP inquiry we came to regard two qualities within the nursing encounter as possible signs of this pattern of engagement. The first was a feeling of uncomfortableness or slight edginess by the observer, as in the example given above, of wondering where the nurse being observed was going with the conversation, for example. This could be followed by the second quality, a sensation of relief when ‘it all became clear’. The second quality could also be present as