The prompts were available if the conversation stalled or needed redirecting. In the phenomenological spirit of moving beyond subjective interpretations and drilling to ‘the thing itself’ (Heidegger, 1962), participants were prompted to give examples from their practice. The interviews were audio recoded and rendered to text through professional transcription. Veliparib It is acknowledged that the act of gathering and interpreting data are not separate events as each is related to the other (Kvale, 1994 and Sandelowski,

1995). Each audio recording was placed in an online repository as close as possible to the event and the research team were able to listen to recordings and become immersed in the data, even before receiving the transcripts. In a circular process between the team and the audio recordings, and then the transcribed data, the data was organized into themes. Evidence in the form of participant quotes that supported the themes or suggested further refinement was gathered. The team conducted an initial thematic analysis individually, then after reading and rereading the transcripts, conversed frequently via teleconference and email until consensus was reached. Themes earned a place in the published construction

through fit to the data, and faithfulness Everolimus chemical structure to the data (Sandelowski, 1995). The published, although not final telling, was a construction arrived at that provides a conceptual map consisting of the predominate story lines or themes (LeCompte, 2000). Any understanding is shaped by a conviction that Erastin there is always more to a phenomenon than can be said about it; the historical continuity implies that meaning cannot be finalized and no interpretation is exhaustive (Davey, 2006). However, a new telling was arrived at through the circular process of moving back and forward between smaller parts of data and the whole; the parts being the

individual participant quotes and lines of discussion – and the whole, being the larger culture of advanced nursing practice. This does allow in Heideggerian terms, a ‘clearing in the woods’ (Heidegger, 1962), where light is shed on the experience of ‘being’ related to the value-add of CNCs in the nursing landscape. The study was approved by the institutional ethics committees of Southern Cross University, the University of Sydney and Northern NSW Local Health District. Demographic data was collected from all focus groups. This data is presented in Table 2. The lived experience of the CNC role was varied, but characterized by the ‘head-up’ nature of this role that distinguished if from that of the other nurse and health clinicians. A consistent and almost unanimous theme that pervaded the conversation was that of flexibility, which was possible because the role was not dominated by having allocated patients. “I’m not counted in the numbers”.