Abstract

For over a century, nursing has been referred to as an art, yet nursing art remains an ambiguous, underdeveloped and devalued aspect of professional practice. A technological, medical, and economically driven health care system may be antithetical to the development of artful nursing. The purpose of this inquiry was to describe nursing art within the context of a critical illness experience. The study generated stories of nursing as art; described the meanings in patients' stories; and permitted stories to illuminate as well as be illuminated by Watson's theory of Human care. ;A narrative inquiry was selected to study the research question: When is nursing art? Ten patients who had been nursed in a critical care unit were engaged in telling their stories on two separate occasions. Five themes were found to represent critically-ill persons' experience of nursing art. They were: Perpetual Presence; Knowing the Other; Intimacy in Agony; Deep Detail; and Honoring the Body. ;Patients' stories revealed the presence, significance and intricacy of nursing as art in critical care. Findings pointed to the distinctive and healing effects of artful nursing in life-threatening situations. Also, stories provided a form for the expression of artful moments which would otherwise be invisible and unknowable. Patients' stories lent a human face and specific context to Transpersonal Caring Art . Watson's theory illuminated the spiritual dimensions in the inter-human moments between nurse and patient. ;Serious attention in the study, education, and practice are essential in order to clearly define and shape the practice and promise of nursing art