Moral Distress Of Nurses Interview

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Moral Distress of Nurses Interview Everyone will end up facing an issue at one point in their life when their moral code of ethics is tested. One profession where peoples’ ethics are tested every day is nursing. Nurses are put in situations everyday where they question their morals because of the decisions of those around them causing a lot of extra stress on nurses. It has become so common that the term moral distress in nurses is being studied. Moral distress in nurses is defined as painful feelings and/or psychological disequilibrium that occurs in situations in which the ethically right course of action is known but cannot be acted upon. It has become highly associated with job dissatisfaction and loss of nurses from the occupation. When I was interviewing a family, friend named Mary she said, “I actually can’t remember a week in my professional career as a nurse when I wasn’t faced with a bio-ethical issue!” This shows that when you are constantly facing issues in which there is a conflict going on between your morals that compromise professional integrity it is very easy to become distressed and lose satisfaction in your job. Mary has been a nurse for 10 years and loves her job but says that at times it gets very difficult and she sometimes questions why she became a nurse in the first place. She described to me one issue that occurred early in her career that has stuck with her. She was working in a Cardiac Surgery ICU that also happened to be a large teaching hospital. They had quite a few patients who needed heart transplants but were not candidates due to the fact that they had so many other health issues or co-morbidities. The patients were informed about a research study where they would receive an artificial heart machine as a replacement to a heart transplant. The machine was called a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD). The patients and their families were under the impression that they would receive the surgery and leave the hospital and live a normal life. Unfortunately, she never saw a patient get discharged from the hospital and all the families were very upset. Although they consented to the procedure and were informed, she felt as though they were all given a lot of false hope. The families and patients would constantly be asking her, Wasn’t this surgery supposed to help me?, “why aren’t we getting any better?” she felt helpless. Mary said “I actually decided to leave the institution and only worked there for 6 months. I left for a variety of reasons, but this was definitely one of them.” One of the main factors of nurse’s moral distress is the Physician- Nurse relationship, when nurses feel the physician is providing incompetent care it is usually a result of poor collaboration and communication and causes higher levels of distress. Mary felt as though the doctor did not inform the patients or families of what could go wrong after the surgery, they only focused on the benefits. This reminded me of when we were taking about the physician-patient relationship in class how the doctors must give patients full understanding of the plan before the procedure starts. In this case, it was clear that the doctors did not give the patients all the information before the surgery, doctors must inform patients of all the possible scenarios that occur after the surgery. Another issue she ran into later in her career was respecting religious beliefs of the patient. A pregnant woman came into the hospital in labor. From an ultrasound, they could see that the baby was breeched meaning that the baby was positioned so that the feet or butt will come out first during child birth. They had to do a c section but, …show more content…
Mary is just one of the many nurses who faces ethical issues in her career daily. Despite all the ethical issues that are thrown their way many causing a lot of stress, they can adapt to the different situations at hand. Mary conveyed to me that she loves her job but it does get difficult at times and wonders if she really is making a difference. But, the days where you see a patient finally able to leave the hospital happy and healthy are worth all the

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