Hossein Ebrahimi, Abdolhassan Kazemi, Mohammad Asghari Jafarabadi, Arezo Azarm,
Volume 6, Issue 4 (10-2013)
Abstract
One of the most important issues in nursing ethics is moral distress, which is a severe psychological problem among nurses. The purpose of this study was to determine the nurses’ moral distress in the hospitals of the northwest of Iran.This was a cross-sectional study in which 418 nurses were selected by randomized multistep sampling method in the northwest of Iran in 2012. Data collection was done using the moral distress standard scale with high reliability and validity. In order to analyze data, descriptive (mean, standard deviation, frequency and percent) and inferential statistics (independent t-test and one way ANOVA) were used.The mean score of nurses’ moral distress was 148.49 ± 32.93, and 222 nurses (53%) suffered from severe moral distress. Of the three provinces under study, Zanjan (152.46 ± 35.88) and intensive care units (152.72 ± 33.36) had the highest moral distress scores. Among the respondents’ demographic characteristics, province (P < 0.01), education (P < 0.05), type of shift (P < 0.05) and job status (P < 0.05) were significantly related to the level of moral distress experienced by the nurses.Due to the high level of moral distress in the nursing profession, dealing with it requires a lot of attention. Studies on casual and predictive factors in different wards and teaching coping strategies to nurses appear to be necessary in order to address this issue.
Masoumeh Hasanlo, Arezo Azarm, Parvaneh Asadi, Azar Avazeh, Mitra Hojt Ansari, Hossein Ebrahimi, Mohammad Asghari Jafarabadi,
Volume 10, Issue 0 (3-2017)
Abstract
Stressful ethical situations are considered as one of the problems of nursing profession, which disrupts the competence of simultaneous application of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values in patient care. Since clinical nurses are more exposed to ethical distress due to their nature of job, especially in in critical care and psychiatric wards, this study was conducted to analyze the relationship between three dimensions of moral distress. In this descriptive-correlational study 545 nurses from Tabriz educational centers were selected by census method in 2013-2014. The moral distress scale (MDS) questionnaire was distributed among partcipants and data was collected during nine months. Data were analyzed by SPSS V13, descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient. According to the findings, the mean of moral distress was 141.89 ± 29.6 (in the intermediate range). Chi-square test showed the relationship between the dimensions of moral distress (the relation between patient's ignorance, decision-making power, and professional competence) (P <0.05). According to the Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient test, there was a direct and significant correlation between the dimensions of moral distress (P <0.05). There was a meaningful correlation between the moral distress and the demographic characteristic of the educational level (P <0.05). Considering the direct and meaningful relationship between three dimensions of moral distress (patient's ignorance, decision-making power, and professional competence), each dimension of moral distress affects another as aggravating or modifying factor. Therefore, it is recommended that planners and health care administrators at the macro level provide appropriate programs to increase the nurse's attention and support to patients and reinforce decision-making power and professional competence by increasing the number of nurses and other controlling programs.
