THE ART OF NURSING - THE EXPERIENCE OF PATIENTS AND NURSES

Historical and contemporary conceptualizations of nursing have not add ressed the art of nursing from an experiential research approach. This study explores patients' and nurses' experiences of the art of nursin g using a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to enquiry that allows for exploration of the empirical experience. Explicating a paradigm o f the art of nursing, five distinct metathemes express nursing as art and describe the complex artistic processes that are lived through the nurse and patient.