Developing an evidence-and ethics-informed intervention for moral distress

Abstract

The global pandemic has intensified the risk of moral distress due to increased demands on already limited human resources and uncertainty of the pandemic’s trajectory. Nurses commonly experience moral distress: a conflict between the morally correct action and what they are required or capable of doing. Effective moral distress interventions are rare. For this reason, our team conducted a multi-phase research study to develop a moral distress intervention for pediatric critical care nurses. In this article, we discuss our multi-phase approach to develop a moral distress intervention—proactive, interdisciplinary meeting. Our proposed intervention is a sequential compilation of empirical work couched within a relational ethics lens thus should point to enhanced potential for intervention effectiveness.