‘Muchness’ as the subjective experience of well-being: a participatory inquiry with nurses

Abstract

Background: My interest in muchness was stimulated upon reading a blog which considered quotes from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ identifying what lessons they might offer healthcare today. One such quote was: ‘You used to be much more “muchier”. You’ve lost your muchness’, said the Mad Hatter. Supported by my experiences of working with nurses who reported feeling overworked, undervalued and undermined, I propose that some nursing staff have lost their muchness - their subjective experience of well-being. This impacts on their readiness to develop themselves, their practice and workplace cultures towards person-centredness. Methods: Drawing upon the work of Paulo Freire and Mark Johnson, theoretical and subsequent person-centred and participatory methodological principles were developed. An innovative research method – Virtual Picture Voice, was created enabling nurses internationally to: • Create and share stories of muchness, generating knowledge about muchness as subjective well-being • Participate in the analysis and synthesis of these stories, contributing to the creation of the Muchness Model Version 1 A metasynthesis process, drawing upon wider theoretical evidence, supported the development of the Muchness Model Version 2. Findings: Situated within virtue ethics, the Muchness Model Version 2 advocates a full-life understanding of well-being for nurses: a balance between the pursuit of feeling fulfilled and feeling good. It values the use of embodied and experiential knowledge to inform and evaluate actions towards nurses experiencing muchness and flourishing in the workplace. Conclusions and implications: A holistic approach to the facilitation of well-being should be adopted, that includes individuals and organisations, working at micro, meso and macro levels, to enable nurses to determine what is important/matters to them personally and professionally; how this can be used to inform: their nursing work; their relationships; their workplace contexts towards enhancing their muchness or subjective experiences of wellbeing. Keywords: Arts-informed approaches, Freire, participatory inquiry, person-centredness, Photo-Voice, subjective well-being, virtual methods