Donna Frost

Design and methods 93 4 potential participants. I emphasized the collaborative nature of the project, the time commitment, the need to get permissions at work for different parts of the investigation and also the fact that we would be working creatively to be able to capture and articulate the parts of practice that were otherwise difficult to put into words. My presentation was digitally recorded and a link added to the minutes of the meeting, along with my slides and a written summary. This was standard practice for guest speakers there, as it was never possible to arrange a meeting where everyone could be present. The group numbered 96 practitioners from various organisations within primary, secondary and tertiary care; 41 were at the meeting. Ten of the 96 NPs expressed initial interest and seven of the ten agreed to participate. This became the second CCCI group (hereafter called the NP inquiry). Other people who contributed to the inquiry In between the formation of the RN and NP inquiry groups, I had approached NP’s and registered nurses with senior clinical roles in a teaching hospital in another region in the Netherlands about forming an inquiry group. That group of two NPs, two specialized RNs and myself did not get off the ground. We had not, after two meetings, reached agreement as to the goals of the group or the central focus of our inquiry together and we felt we were unlikely to do so. For this reason we decided, in mutual agreement, to stop the group. We agreed that the bulk of the data generated together during the meetings, and the small amount of data generated between the first and second meeting, would not be retained or used in the overall inquiry. The exception to this were the reflections I had made as part of my own inquiry into my role as facilitator of the inquiry groups. Much information about the impact and meaning of particular nursing encounters could only be gained in dialogue with people outside the inquiry groups: students and colleagues, patients, residents and their family members. The methodological principles shaping the CCCI include the idea that everyone who contributes to the inquiry has the potential to benefit from participation: to come to new insights, better understand their situation and to encounter conditions within the inquiry that contribute to their flourishing. This is challenging, as demonstrated by many co- operative or collaborative inquiries reported on in which people outside the inquiry groups contribute data without being further involved in directing the inquiry process, meaning making or contesting the developing conclusions (eg. Ness & Strong, 2013 ; Van Lith, 2014 ; Walsh et al., 2015 ). The strategies used to meet this challenge within the CCCI are described in the following section.