Donna Frost

Chapter 2 46 multiple ways of knowing and draw on diverse forms of knowledge, for example propositional, experiential and tacit knowledge, aesthetic knowledge, local knowledge and knowledge of the client and their preferences. Their capacity to integrate these various knowledges in the midst of practice is, within this body of literature, an uncontested characteristic of professional artistry. The results from diverse studies within nursing (eg. Conway, 1996 ; McIntosh, 1996 ; Bryans, 2000 ; Titchen, 2000 ; Titchen and McGinley, 2003 ; Hardy et al., 2006 ; 2009 ) lend empirical support to this view. There is a potentially bewildering array of other characteristics, capacities and skills thought to be brought by well-prepared practitioners to those situations in which professional artistry is demonstrated. These have been listed and described in varying detail by diverse authors, sometimes based on research generated evidence but often on experience or theoretical perspectives. Recipients (see for eg. Gramling, 2006 ) and observers of nursing care (eg. Titchen, 1998 , 2000 ; Callahan, 1990 ; Wright, 2004 ; Cronan, 2006 ) include passion, courage, openness and intelligence in this list. Some researchers emphasize diverse forms of intelligence, for example, emotional, bodily and spiritual intelligences. They add to this the professional’s creative imagination, or the ability to imagine how transformation of the situation could be achieved. Professionals demonstrating artistry are understood, moreover, to have the capacity to pay attention to and to work with the invisible aspects of practice, such as their own and the client’s values, attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, expectations and feelings. Their ability to recognise, drawon and integrate these invisible aspectswith their knowledge of varying kinds and from diverse sources have been compared to that of a wine connoisseur (Andresen and Fredericks, 2001 ) or an artist whose tools are used as an extension of them self (Beeston and Higgs, 2001 ). In Titchen’s ( 2019 ) most recent work on professional artistry the various attributes that the professional brings to the encounter are presented as nine ‘dimensions of self’ (p. 50 ): ways of knowing, different knowledges, multiple intelligences, creative imagination, multiple discourses, artistic and cognitive critique, use of self, artistic qualities and praxis skills. These nine dimensions do not stand alone. They are integrated and enacted in practice by seven processes of professional artistry (Titchen, 2009 , 2019 ). The processes, for example ‘attunement’ and ‘balance’, enable the professional to respond creatively and appropriately within the professional encounter and are often less visible than the dimensions. They are looked at in more detail under the fifth aspect of this concept analysis: the professional perceiving and responding holistically.