Donna Frost

Concept analysis 47 2 Finally, it is both implied (eg. Appleton, 1993 ; Antrobus, 1997 ; Gore et al., 2000 ; Titchen, 2000 ) and argued (eg. Titchen and Higgs, 2001 b; Grainger, 2003 ; Austen, 2010 , Titchen and McGinley 2003 , McGinley 2009 ) that practitioners demonstrating professional artistry are not merely engaged in doing certain things but in being – and becoming – certain kinds of people. Fish ( 1998 ) and Manley ( 2008 ) propose that practitioners must have a predisposition to developing professional artistry, and patients in Gramling’s ( 2004 ; 2006 ) study thought that a nurse either ‘had it’ or did not (McNeill, 2006 ). Some studies do suggest that this predisposition, or capacity to develop professional artistry, may have to do with the worldview of the practitioner. The advanced practice nurses in Conway’s ( 1996 ) study who demonstrated professional artistry belonged to a group with a, what she termed, ‘humanistic existentialist’ worldview. Similarly, Klemola and Norros’s ( 2001 ) study with anaesthetists revealed two different ‘habits of action’ among a group of experienced anaesthetists. Klemola and Norros understood those anaesthetists who had an ‘interpretive’ habit of action to be practising with professional artistry, compared to those with a ‘reactive’ habit of action. The personal and professional characteristics of the practitioner demonstrating professional artistry can therefore be understood in terms of praxis and epistemology, but also ontologically; they have to do with the professional’s way of being (Titchen, 2019 ; Titchen & Kinsella, 2019 ). 3 . Professional artistry occurs against a professional framework Guiding lights: values, ethics, knowledge, theory base. Test, expand, create. There is overwhelming agreement in the literature that professional artistry occurs against the background conventions and traditions peculiar to the profession in question. The theory or tradition of the profession defines what is appropriate and meaningful within the professional episode (Andresen and Fredericks, 2001 ) so that practice, including episodes of professional artistry, displays ‘certain characteristics which are understoodwithin a genre’ (Beeston and Higgs, 2001 , p. 109 ). Importantly, a professional capable of artistry is not using the tradition or theoryof their profession as a blueprint (Cherry and Higgs, 2011 ) or like a rigid rulebook of predetermined actions (Bryant, 2010 ). Instead, the background conventions and principles supply a set of principles (Conway, 1996 ; Baker, 2015 ) or a framework within which the professional can reflect on, dialogue with and make sense of the practice situation in which he or she is acting. Such particularising and balancing (Titchen et al., 2007 ; Titchen, 2009 , 2019 ) requires and is indicative of professional artistry.