Donna Frost

Chapter 8 250 flourishing. Titchen ( 2009 , 2019 ), McCormack ( 2009 ), McCormack and Titchen ( 2007 ) and a large number of colleagues (eg. Titchen & Higgs, 2001 b; Titchen & McGinley, 2003 ; Horsfall & Higgs, 2007 ; Titchen et al., 2007 ; Hardy et al., 2009 a; Henderson, 2009 ; Titchen & Hardy, 2009 ; Horsfall & Higgs, 2011 ) argue that it is the professional artistry of healthcare, research and practice development practitioners that enables them to practise in ways that can result in human flourishing for all those involved. When practising with professional artistry, nurses (eg. Appleton, 1991 ; 1993 ; Conway, 1996 ; Cronan, 2006 ; Finfgeld-Connett, 2008 a; Gramling 2004 b, 2006 ), medical (Fish and de Cossart, 2007 ) and other professionals (eg. Bickford and Van Vleck, 1997 ; Gore et al., 2000 ; Henderson, 2001 ; Grainger, 2003 ; Cowan, 2007 ; Austen, 2010 ) contribute to the ongoing growth, wellbeing and learning of the other person. Moreover, in practising in this way professionals care for themselves as well (Hall, 2005 ; McGinley, 2009 ; Tasker and Titchen, 2016 ; Kinsella, 2017 ; 2018 ): the expanded potential for human connection and growth is mutual. The present research makes explicit, in the words of patients, colleagues and nurses, how the outlook of the person concerned has been changed, how the space within which they experience themselves as having influence and being able to act has been enlarged. Often incremental in nature, such changes were not always particularly noticeable at the time. They were nevertheless remarkable when the person concerned looked back and reflected on where they had been and where they were now. The encounter with the nurse practising with professional artistry, or series of encounters, left the patient or colleague of the nurse with an expanded range of possibilities. Furthermore, this movement towards human flourishing was no longer dependant on the nurse and his or her interventions. The changed situation had become the new ‘norm’ for the person concerned. These findings lend further empirical support to extant theoretical frameworks in which professional artistry is seen as central to transformative practice and enabling human flourishing, such as skilled companionship (Titchen, 2001 b), critical companionship (Titchen, 2001 a; Titchen & Hammond, 2017 ), practice development (Manley et al., 2008 ; McCormack et al., 2013 ) and critical creativity (McCormack & Titchen, 2006 ; Titchen & McCormack, 2008 , 2010 ). Praxiological findings: the patterns of engagement The five patterns of engagement revealed in this study are congruent with the attributes of professional artistry described in Chapter 2 (see column 4 in Table 2 . 3 ). They explain in detail the ways in which the professional uses self and their personal and professional qualities to come to understand both the person