Consequences of Moral Distress in faculty member in the field of nursing: a qualitative Study

While institutional constraints make the teacher has not able to implement his moral decision, leading to a conflict between the right moral decision and his professional conduct, alternatively he will suffer from a negative feeling and psychological imbalance that emphasized moral distress. Moral distress occurs not only in clinical settings but also in academic area. The purpose of this study was to explain the experience of faculty member in the field of nursing in regards to the consequences of moral distress impact on their activities in the work environment.

This qualitative study was applied during a period of 11 months in in Nursing and Midwifery schools in Tehran, Iran in 2017. 13 faculty member in the field of nursing were selected through purposive sampling method. Data was gathered using in-depth semi-structured interviews with main question in term of the consequences of moral distress in working environment. Conventional qualitative content analysis was used for analyzing the data.

The analysis of the data in this study led to emerge four main categories and eight subcategories based on the experience of faculty member in the field of nursing about the consequences of moral distress. The main categories included; the ineffective training, organizational silence, decreased sense of professional development and job burnout and the subcategories included decreased teaching quality, ineffective communication in the educational space, silent protest, damage to team performance, threat to professional identity, stagnation of professional growth, psychological reactions, and physical reactions.

The consequences of moral distress in faculty member in the field of nursing lead to make some barriers to desirable educational activities, such as a lack of a sense of accomplishment, a tendency toward negative moods in the workplace which causes damage of their performance or others professonal problems for provide learning. Therefore use of specific management and organizational strategies to control the consequences of moral distress in faculty member have been recommended.