Donna Frost

Chapter 2 56 There is a long history within nursing of scholarly work and research that has considered or investigated a diverse range of nursing skills and qualities which could contribute to the nurse being able to act with professional artistry. Such work has examined, for example, different ways of knowing (eg. Bender & Elias, 2017 ), the development of nursing expertise (Benner, 1984 ) or clinical judgment (Benner & Tanner, 1987 ), compassionate listening (Kimble & Bamford-Wade, 2013 ), synchrony (Krejci, 1992 ), paying attention to the little things amidst the complexity of everyday practice (MacLeod, 1994 ), the development of compassion (eg. Mercer, Kenworthy & Pierce-Hayes, 2016 ), learning how to be with others in intense interpersonal situations (Ramey & Bunkers, 2006 ), identifying the sublime and beautiful moments in nursing (Siles-González & Solano-Ruiz, 2016 ), reflection in action (Stockhausen, 2006 ), the art of being present (Turpin, 2014 ) or the development of emotional competence (eg. Wilson & Carryer, 2008 ). These researchers and scholars tend not to link their work specifically to professional artistry, referring more commonly to expertise or being able to work in holistic and patient-centred ways. Nevertheless, as the concept analysis shows, these and other such qualities, skills, attributes or capabilities could potentially be relevant to the nurse practising with professional artistry. To date, those inquiries which have focused on professional artistry within nursing have also studied facets of the concept, but not the concept in its entirety. Research and scholarly work in which insights about professional artistry in nursing have emerged or are presented more holistically have had, in the first instance, another focus of inquiry. Furthermore, although in some of the studies presented the perspective of the nurses themselves is hinted at or explicated, that too is in relation to the development of expertise more generally or the development of an aspect of expertise. A holistic investigation into the nature of professional artistry in nursing, from the dual perspective of both researcher and practitioners themselves, is missing in the literature. Research goals The intention of this present study, then, was not to look at the component parts of professional artistry, or the personal qualities or individual techniques of nurses practising with professional artistry, but rather to discover and explicate what professional artistry looked like ‘in action’, as it came together and was expressed in the embodied praxis of the nurse. The goals of this research were to uncover and explicate the nature of professional artistry in nursing practice and to investigate how, despite its complexity, the development of professional artistry in nursing practice could be facilitated.