Essay On Moral Distress In Nursing

Operational definitions:
Critical care nursing is defined as the field of nursing with an attention on the most extreme care of the unstable or critically ill patients following extensive surgery, injury and/or life-threatening diseases. (Australia 's Future Health Workforce - Nurses, 2014)

Implications: The consistency in the reactions to moral distress experience among participants is remarkable and informative to those working in critical care units and for decision makers.

Moral distress as defined by Leggett, 2013 is a state of the psychological disequilibrium that, ones experience when they know the right ethical decision to make but they cannot make it due to institutional constraints (Leggett, 2013). Additionally, Weinzimmer, et al, 2014 characterized moral distress as a phenomenon in which a healthcare professional perceives an ethically preferable or morally right course of action to take, yet internal or external constraints make it nearly impossible to pursue that course. (Weinzimmer, et al, 2014)

Health Status: as defined in medical dictionary; A generic term for the health (good or poor) of a person, group or population in a particular area, especially when compared to other areas or with national data, which level of health of an individual person, a group or a population as assessed by that

The external one focused on the work environment while the internal one focused on the psychological effect. Nursing has been described as a moral profession with nurses as moral agents. This theory proposed 8 moral concepts used to describe moral distress through the literature. How these concepts act & interact with one another can lead to moral distress or moral intent to act. Moral distress can have an impact on three levels: (1) the patient; (2) the nurse; and (3) the organization. (Aft,