Articulating a policy resolution for sexual diversity research: nurses as moral agents.

This case study of community nurses in the Canadian province of Ontario explores the relevance of power relations to nursing ethical inquiry. Public health nurses critically reflected on their role in challenging social inequities as they generated evidence to inform practice. In the process, they developed a policy resolution articulating values and principles for ethical nursing research with diversely situated sexual minorities.The author uses a qualitative case study design and applies a feminist bioethics framework using critical literature to analyze this document and the practice context.The findings suggest that dynamics of power, including gender, influence nurses' ability to advocate for sexual minorities through research, prompting the development of a public statement on knowledge production. There are implications for undertaking nursing ethical inquiries that explore how dominant and counter-discourses and multiple dimensions of power shape nurses' moral agency in challenging the status quo.     

Ethical dilemmas and moral distress in oncology nursing practice

Although ethical values and principles guide oncology nursing practice, nurses often are challenged to fulfill every professional core duty and responsibility in their everyday practice. Nurses commonly encounter clinical situations that have ethical conflicts, and they often have difficulty recognizing and articulating them. Unresolved conflicts can cause feelings of frustration and powerlessness, which can lead to compromises in patient care, job dissatisfaction, disagreements among those in the healthcare team, and burnout. This article reviews the ethical principles and values individual nurses bring to their practice as well as those basic to the profession of nursing. This article also discusses ethical conflicts in oncology practice and describes how nurses, especially students and novice nurses, may react to such situations with moral uncertainty or distress. In addition, a process for analyzing and resolving ethical problems in clinical situations is outlined. Increasing awareness and dialogue about ethical issues is an important first step in the process. Additional resources in the clinical setting may encourage nurses to actively participate in ethical decision making and take deliberate action as moral agents.     

Moral problems experienced by nurses when caring for terminally ill people: a literature review

This article is a review of the literature on the subject of how nurses who provide palliative care are affected by ethical issues. Few publications focus directly on the moral experience of palliative care nurses, so the review was expanded to include the moral problems experienced by nurses in the care of the terminally ill patients. The concepts are first defined, and then the moral attitudes of nurses, the threats to their moral integrity, the moral problems that are perceived by nurses, and the emotional consequences of these moral problems are considered in turn. The results show that the moral behaviour of nurses, which is theoretically grounded in commitment to care and to the patient, appears to be shaped by specific processes that lead to engagement or to mental and behavioural disengagement in morally difficult situations. Nurses often appear to fail to recognize the moral dimensions of the problems they experience and also to lack the skills they need to resolve moral problems adequately. Although the findings show that several elements that are beyond the control of nurses, owing to their lack of autonomy and authority, influence their moral experience, intrinsic factors such as feelings of insecurity and powerlessness have a profound effect on nurses' perceptions and attitudes in the face of moral problems. The moral problems perceived by these nurses are related to end-of-life issues, communication with patients, the suffering of patients, and the appropriateness of the medical treatment.     

The nature of dilemmas in dialysis nurse practice

Dilemmas are a part of nurse practice. In situations where a problem potentially has two or more unsatisfactory resolutions, the nurse chooses which course of action to take. The decision to choose constitutes a dilemma. This study focuses on the dilemmas faced by nurses in dialysis units and the context in which they occur. A qualitative design was employed, using open interviews with eight nurses currently employed in dialysis nursing. This approach was taken in order to explore and gain in-depth understanding of the dilemmas in practice. Analysis reveals that dilemmas encountered in dialysis nursing emerge from conflicts in relationships with other people in the work environment. The dilemmas relate to the nurses' perception of the limited power they have in the determination of their practice. This powerlessness is reinforced by their perceived and real isolation from nurses working outside their area of practice. Traditionally, literature on dilemmas in nursing has focused on the development of ethical frameworks to guide practice and the resolution of dilemmas. However, the findings of this study suggest that if nurses are to deal with dilemmas effectively, both for the nurse and the patient, there must be an examination of the structural constraints affecting their practice. Models that are employed by nurses to guide practice must account for the structural elements in the work environment.     

Listening to nurses' moral voices: building a quality health care environment

In this paper we describe a research project in nursing ethics aimed at exploring the meaning of ethics for nurses providing direct care with clients. This was a practice-based project in which participants who were staff nurses, nurses in advanced practice, and students in nursing were asked to tell us (or describe to us) how they thought about ethics in their practice, and what ethical practice meant to them. We then undertook to analyze, describe and understand the enactment of ethical practice, the opportunities for and barriers to such enactment, as well as the resources nurses need for ethical practice. We drew out implications of these findings for nursing leaders. We identified practice realities that create a climate for ethical or moral distress, and the way in which nurses attempt to maintain their moral agency. Practice realities included nurses' ethical concerns about policies guiding care; the financial, human and temporal resources available for care; and the power and conflicting loyalties nurses encounter inproviding good care. Maintaining moral agency involved use of a variety of ethical resources and the identification of resources needed to provide good care, as well as the processes used to enact moral agency. Nurse leaders are also moral agents. Important implications of these findings for nursing leaders are that they need moral courage to be self-reflective, to name their own moral distress, and to act so that their nursing staff are able to be moral agents. Nurse leaders need to be the moral compass for nurses, using their power as a positive force to promote, provide and sustain quality practice environments for safe, competent and ethical practice.     

Nursing is different than medicine: ethical difficulties in the process of care in surgical units

AIM: This paper describes a study of the kinds of ethical difficulties nurses face in the process of care in surgical units. BACKGROUND: Nurses face ethically difficult situations in trying to find the most appropriate actions to take for patients. Differences of opinion with doctors about the treatment and care of patients and conflicts between nurses' value systems and those in the organization where they are employed are described as sources of ethical difficulty. Nurses experience moral distress when institutional constraints restrict them from carrying out appropriate moral actions. METHODS: Ten female nurses working in surgical units at one university hospital in Norway were interviewed as part of a comprehensive investigation into the narratives of nurses and doctors about being in ethically difficult situations. The transcribed interview texts were subjected to a phenomenological-hermeneutic interpretation. The study was conducted during 2004. FINDINGS: The main ethically difficult care situations described by the nurses concerned being open and honest, trusting patients' complaints, and creating limits to their involvement. Differences in opinion with doctors about the treatments, the absence of doctors in the unit and limited interest in holistic treatment and care resulted in nurses not receiving the medical orders they needed. A heavy workload, lack of time and staffing problems resulted in difficult ethical prioritizations and reduced standards of care. Shared rooms and beds in the corridors made it difficult to preserve patients' rights to privacy and confidentiality. CONCLUSION: Interventions and investments are needed to improve the work environment of nurses, especially modifying the job constraints of the work environment. The moral responsibility for upholding the quality of care in surgical services and hospital performance should be more equally distributed between nurses, doctors and hospital managers. Discussions and collaboration between and within healthcare disciplines and managers should be initiated to establish shared moral understanding of the standards of care in hospitals.     

Is there a unique nursing ethic?

There is no agreement in the nursing literature as to the meaning of the term, nursing ethics. Proposed definitions refer to nurses' moral decision-making and behaviors, ethical conflicts, and analysis of ethical issues that arise within nurses' practice. Presumably, a distinct nursing ethic should address unique theories, standards, and inquiry into what comprises nurses' ethical behavior and study of how nurses actually behave and reason about ethical issues. The purpose of this column is to synthesize the dialogue regarding the potential existence of a unique nursing ethic, and to propose that such an ethic has yet to emerge.     

Exploring the heart of ethical nursing practice: implications for ethics education

The limitations of rational models of ethical decision making and the importance of nurses' human involvement as moral agents is increasingly being emphasized in the nursing literature. However, little is known about how nurses involve themselves in ethical decision making and action or about educational processes that support such practice. A recent study that examined the meaning and enactment of ethical nursing practice for three groups of nurses (nurses in direct care positions, student nurses, and nurses in advanced practice positions) highlighted that humanly involved ethical nursing practice is also simultaneously a personal process and a socially mediated one. Of particular significance was the way in which differing role expectations and contexts shaped the nurses' ethical practice. The study findings pointed to types of educative experiences that may help nurses to develop the knowledge and ability to live in and navigate their way through the complex, ambiguous and shifting terrain of ethical nursing practice.     

Critical care nurses' perceptions of and responses to moral distress.

Nurses frequently experience conflict regarding healthcare decisions, yet are expected to implement actions which they perceive to be morally wrong. Research has described the deleterious effects of this moral incongruency, coined moral distress, on nurses' well being and has identified it as a causative agent in nursing turnover, burnout, and nurses leaving the profession. Thus, it is known that moral distress has significant consequences for nurses, but does moral distress affect nurses' provision of care, and if so, how?     

The impact of nursing education on ethical/moral decision making

A study of 227 baccalaureate and 111 master's nursing students was conducted to determine the influence of the level of formal education on three selected factors: ethical/moral reasoning, attribution of responsibility, and ethical/moral dilemma resolution. Moral development theory and Heider's attribution of responsibility construct provided the theoretical framework. A comparison of the overall index of ethical/moral reasoning showed that graduate students reasoned at a higher level than undergraduate students. The amount of attribution of responsibility assigned and the dilemma resolution score did not differ for the two groups. The results of this study suggest that undergraduate and graduate nursing programs must place more emphasis on identifying dilemmas, increasing ethical/moral reasoning levels and attributing responsibility in a justifiable manner. Nurse researchers must continue to study how nurses respond in dilemma situations and how personal characteristics, factors in the environment, education, and the assignment of responsibility affect nurses' ability to resolve ethical/moral dilemmas.     

Distressing situations in the intensive care unit: a descriptive study of nurses' responses.

Moral distress is a significant stressor for nurses in critical care. Feeling that they are doing the "right thing" is important to nurses, and situations of moral distress can make them question their work. The purpose of this study was to describe critical care nurses' levels of moral distress, the effects of that distress on their personal and professional lives, and nurses' coping strategies. The study consisted of open-ended questions to elicit qualitatively the nurses' feelings about moral distress and a quantitative measure of the degree of distress caused by certain types of situations. The questionnaires were then analyzed to assess the nurses' opinions regarding moral distress, how their self-perceived job performance is affected, and what coping methods they use to deal with moral distress. The most frequently encountered moral distress situations involved critically ill patients whose families wished to continue aggressive treatment when it probably would not benefit the patient in the end.     

Preserving moral integrity: a follow-up study with new graduate nurses

Preserving moral integrity: a follow-up study with new graduate nurses ¶The purpose of this follow-up study was to describe, explain and interpret how new graduate nurses perceived their adaptation to the ‘real world’ of hospital nursing and what they perceived as major influences on their moral values and ethical roles in the 2 years following graduation. The method was qualitative, specifically grounded theory. The earlier study took place when informants were senior nursing students. The follow-up study began after the informants had been practising for 1 year. Research questions guiding the study were: How do new graduate nurses describe their adaptation to the ‘real world’ of hospital nursing? What do they describe as factors influencing their moral values and ethical roles in hospital nursing? Preserving moral integrity was the basic psycho-social process that explained how these new graduate nurses adapted to the real world of hospital nursing. Six stages of this process were identified: vulnerability; getting through the day; coping with moral distress; alienation from self; coping with lost ideals; and integration of new professional self-concept. Moral distress was a consequence of the effort to preserve moral integrity. It is the result of believing that one is not living up to one’s moral convictions. Data supported that the most pervasive attributes of moral distress were self-criticism and self-blame, as informants judged their actions against their moral convictions and their standards of what a good nurse would do. Moral distress was an acute form of psychological disorientation in which informants questioned their professional knowledge, what kind of nurses they were and what kind of nurses they were becoming. Theoretical explanations of these findings are grounded in social interaction and moral psychology theories.     

The positive face of resistance: nurses relate their stories

OBJECTIVE: To relate nurses' stories of their experiences of acts of resistance. BACKGROUND: Although resistance is often characterized as negative, it can be seen as a way that the less powerful speak up about workplace concerns. By studying how nurses resist, new perspectives about how some groups exercise power may be understood. METHODS: For this qualitative study, 19 nurses were interviewed. They were asked to describe an act of resistance in their professional life. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed using narrative methods. RESULTS: Four major categories emerged from the narratives: definitions of resistance, relationships, core narratives, and creating meaning. This article focuses on 2 of these for space constraints and relevance to this journal: relationships and creating meaning. CONCLUSION: The nurses interviewed described situations in their work lives, where they felt that they performed an act of resistance because of unfair treatment, abuse of power, or ethical concerns. It often took courage to do so, but the acts had mainly positive effects on them and their institutions. It is theorized that resistance may actually be positive for both the staff nurse and the organization.     

Unity of knowing and action- exploring moral courage in nursing practice

Ethics is a core value of nursing, and hospital nurses will try, as much as possible, to be "good" in terms of established nursing ethics and values. Nurses learn the value of providing "patient centered care" in school and try to establish relationships of trust with their patients in clinical settings. However, the realities of working in the hospital teaches nurses that actual situations are complex to the point of inducing "ethical dilemmas" and "moral distress" because of the many factors that affect medical decisions regarding individual patients. If nurses could follow their conscience in managing difficult ethical situations with moral courage, they would promote the value of "good nurse" which is innate in both nurses and society. This article defines the parameters of conscience and moral courage, the conditions such should exhibit, strategies nurses should consider, and appropriate nursing training methods. The authors hope to help foster the development of moral courage and create positive practice environments for nursing staff.     

Nurses' perceptions of and responses to morally distressing situations

Research on moral distress has paid limited attention to nurses' responses and actions. In a survey of nurses' perceptions of moral distress and ethical climate, 292 nurses answered three open-ended questions about situations that they considered morally distressing. Participants identified a range of situations as morally distressing, including witnessing unnecessary suffering, being forced to provide care that compromised values, and negative judgments about patients. They linked these situations to contextual constraints such as workload and described responses, including feeling incompetent and distancing themselves from patients. Participants described considerable effort to effect change, calling into question the utility of defining moral distress as an "inability to act due to institutional constraints" or a "failure to pursue a right course of action." Various understandings of moral distress operated, and action was integral to their responses. The findings suggest further conceptual work on moral distress and effort to support system-level change.     

Wanted-nurses. Ethical issues and the nursing shortage

The persistent nursing shortage is challenging the values and beliefs of the nursing profession and causing nurses to ask how they can fulfill their ethical responsibilities to patients when there are an insufficient number and a maldistribution of nurses. Nurses are expressing job dissatisfaction, experiencing moral distress, and wondering about their inability to provide quality patient care. In this article, the author addresses the commitment to care for patients and the ethical dilemma with which nurses are grappling: caring for self versus caring for others. Recommendations for possible action include reenvisioning the profession of nursing, empowering nurses, providing support, and restructuring the work environment. Taken together, these actions have the potential to reduce the moral distress that nurses are experiencing and to enable them to honor their commitment to patient care.     

Ethical Dilemma and Moral Distress: Proposed New NANDA Diagnoses

PURPOSE: To propose two NANDA diagnoses--ethical dilemma and moral distress--and to distinguish between the NANDA diagnosis decisional conflict and the proposed nursing diagnosis of ethical dilemma. SOURCES USED: Journal articles, books, and focus group research findings. DATA SYNTHESIS: Moral/ethical situations exist in health care. Nurses' experiences of ethical dilemmas and moral distress are extrapolated to the types and categories of ethical dilemmas and moral distress that patients experience and are used as the basis for development of two new nursing diagnoses. CONCLUSION: The two proposed NANDA diagnoses fill a void in current standardized terminology. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: It is important that nurses have the ability to diagnose ethical or moral situations in health care. Currently, NANDA does not offer a means to document this important phenomenon. The creation of two sets of nursing diagnoses, ethical dilemma and moral distress, will enable nurses to recognize and track nursing care related to ethical or moral situations.     

临床护士道德困境的潜在剖面分析及其与道德敏感性的关系研究

目的 调查临床护士道德困境现况,分析临床护士道德困境的潜在剖面及其与道德敏感性的关系并探讨不同剖面的影响因素。方法 采取便利抽样法于2022年5月选取武汉市某三级甲等综合医院1 022名临床护士作为调查对象。采用一般资料调查表、护士道德敏感性量表、护士道德困境量表进行调查,以护士道德困境量表的4个外显指标进行潜在剖面分析,并用单因素分析、二分类Logistic回归分析进行统计分析。结果 1 022名临床护士的道德困境可分为“低道德困境型”（72.7%）和“高道德困境型”（27.3%）2个潜在剖面。道德困境的影响因素包括年龄、职称、道德力量与责任、道德负担感（P<0.05）。结论 临床护士道德困境水平处于轻度水平。护士道德困境可分为2个类别,护理管理者应根据不同剖面的人群特征制定针对性的干预方案,增强护士道德敏感性,降低其道德困境水平。针对“高道德困境型”护士,既要注意培养护士道德决策能力,也要充分营造良好的医院伦理氛围,合理授权,疏导其因道德困境产生的不良情绪;针对“低道德困境型”护士,要强化护士职业道德伦理再教育,提升护理道德修养,规范临床实践中的道德行为,从而改善护理质量。