Ethical Decision Making in Nursing Practice: The Impact on Moral Distress

There is significant research that indicates nurses working in a hospital setting experience moral distress while caring for their patients. While there are many barriers that prevent nurses from overcoming moral distress and moving toward moral resilience, this research project focused on eliminating barriers that nurses face in making good ethical, moral, biblical decisions. The research methodology for this project was qualitative, interpretive, and longitudinal. There was an initial interview with five participant nurses at Ellis Medicine regarding their knowledge of ethics in healthcare and moral distress. The researcher then provided an education program for participant nurses to increase their knowledge of ethics in healthcare and moral distress and provide tools to help them overcome barriers in taking action to make good ethical, moral, biblical decisions, which will help build moral resilience. The nurses took a survey following the education program to measure the impact of the intervention. The results of the study support the hypothesis that nurses face barriers in making good ethical, moral, biblical decisions in their practice, and education can help alleviate barriers along with helping to build moral resilience