PhD Research

My PhD is funded by a Vice Chancellor Scholarship at Sheffield Hallam University’s department of Art & Design, and it is due to be completed at the beginning of 2025. I worked with 9 Critical Care Nurses, from 7 different countries who are working in 5 different countries; the research was mostly conducted in a remote format. With each nurse I facilitated a photographic process designed to support the translation of moral distress into images. By reflecting on ethical and moral challenges experienced at work, the nurses explained and articulated specific, related situations that they had been in, verbally and through images. Each nurse’s decision about what and how to photograph revealed something about the ways that photography offers an accessible but intricate way of communicating experiences that have occurred around end-of-life care, and the difficult decisions that staff often need to take at this time. I gave each nurse photographic guidance that began with text prompts that were taken from the sub-categories of Georgina Morley’s research into the definition of moral distress: dilemma, uncertainty, constraint, conflict and tension.* The research then unfolded into 9 different processes. As an artist-researcher I wanted to allow each participant the time and pace required to reach a finishing point, and present the work in a manner that reflected each unique process. The curation of this research was therefore an important part of the process, and I hope the decision to present the stories and the text together in a live, storytelling, installation format enables new possibilities of understanding for listeners and viewers from a range of disciplines.

Updates and live events for Autumn 2024 will be confirmed shortly here.

*Morley G, Bradbury-Jones C, Ives J. What is ‘moral distress’ in nursing? A feminist empirical bioethics study. Nursing Ethics. 2020;27(5):1297-1314. doi:10.1177/0969733019874492