Donna Frost

Nature of professional artistry 197 6 Let people cry, or be angry. Don’t ‘shush’ them. Stay with them while they work it through. (DylanNPI-Mtg 7 -Rec 3 of 4 ) It is important to be honest, to not be afraid of telling patients the truth. And if you do ‘A’ then you have to do ‘B’. [That is,] you can’t do this without supporting them to deal with the message. (AnnaNPI-Mtg 7 -Rec 3 of 4 ) This is not to say that the nurse practising with artistry is all things to all patients, but that he makes sure the appropriate referrals are made or that the attention is given to issues that arise. Patients describe nurses working in this way as ‘going above and beyond’ the call of duty. The nurses felt, as the professionals, that they couldn’t have done less. She’s really a person to count on. […] I’d go into battle with her [Lilian]. Ha ha. She sure went into battle for me! (NPI- 2014 Pat 14 Con-p 5 ) It’s amazing really! She [Wendy] is amazing. She did everything she should have and more. Oh I really made her work hard for it, looking back, it was not easy for me, I was short tempered and I had no patience with anyone. It didn’t stop her though. She took it all on board. (NPI- 2014 Pat 15 Con-p 9 ) Being committed to the encounter, to the relationship or to the process, does not mean then that all the interventions of the nurse are on target the first time or that every path goes where expected. Working in this way is full of trying out and having another go. When we were practising with artistry we regarded the situations that were challenging or less than successful as part of the process of refinement, part of getting to know the situation, working out what could really be a good solution, what might work for this patient at this moment. See Figure 6 . 9 for examples of how we described this.