Appreciative Inquiry: A Program to Enhance Positive Nurse-to-Nurse Interaction

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a model of organizational behavior developed by Cooperrider and colleagues in the 1980s.1 Within the last decade, the AI model has been applied within health care organizations to develop different understandings and enhance the process of care delivery.2 AI consists of 4 key components: discover-to recognize the best that is; dream-to describe how to make what is good even better; design-to develop what could be; and destiny-to put the best designs into practice.1 Appreciative Inquiry is further described as a way of being and seeing. It is both a worldview and a process for facilitating positive change in human systems, e.g., organizations, groups, and communities. Its assumption is that every human system has something that works right-things that give it life when it is vital, effective, and successful. AI begins by identifying this positive core and connecting to it in ways that heighten energy, sharpen vision, and inspire action for change.1