Moral Distress in Nurses Providing Direct Patient Care on Inpatient Oncology Units

Many authors have described moral distress in nurses working at the bedside. Most research has focused on nurses working in critical care units. There is limited research on other types of units. The aims of this project were: to examine the level of moral distress in nurses who work on inpatient oncology units; to compare moral distress by the demographic characteristics of nurses and work experience variables; and to identify demographic characteristics and type of clinical setting that may predict which nurses are at risk for moral distress. This project was a cross sectional survey design with staff nurses working on inpatient units at the Ohio State University (OSU) Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital & Richard J. Solove Research Institute (The James). The investigators distributed the Moral Distress Scale – Revised (MDS-R) that is used to assess the intensity and frequency of moral distress to all direct care staff nurses who work at least 50% at The James. The response rate was 27.5% (100/363). The mean MDS-R score in this project was 81.3 and the range was 4.0 – 266. These are slightly lower than the scores found for critical care nurses. Only the level of education and the type of unit correlated with the MDS-R scores. A model using the level of education and the type of unit to predict the MDS-R scores was developed.No embarg