Application of Joanna Briggs Institute physical restraint standards to critical emergency department patients following CONSORT guidelines.

To explore the effect of Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) physical restraint standards in improving physical restraint in critical and emergency department patients.Enrolled 300 critical patients admitted in our hospital's emergency department from January to December 2019: 150 patients admitted January to June 2019 as control group and 150 patients admitted July to December 2019 as observation group. Routine restraints were applied in control group. Emergency department nurses in the observation group received thematic and practical JBI standardized training. This included pre-restraint assessment, principles of physical restraint, informed consent, using a restraint decision-making wheel, and alternatives to physical restraint. The incidence of restraint-associated adverse events (e.g., skin bruising, swelling) and restraint utilization rate were examined between 2 groups.The incidence of adverse events and the restraint utilization rate were significantly lower in the observation group (P < .05).The application of JBI physical restraint standards for emergency department patients can effectively reduce the incidence of adverse events and the restraint utilization rate.

Nurses confronting the coronavirus: Challenges met and lessons learned to date.

Registered nurses are an essential workforce group across the globe. They use their expertise and skill sets every day in clinical practice to protect, promote, and advocate on behalf of patients and families under their care. In this article we discuss the physical, emotional, and moral stresses that nurses are experiencing in their day-to-day practice settings created by the novel coronavirus. We consider the demands placed on nurses by unexpected patient surges within hospital environments and inadequate personal protective equipment and other critical resources, challenging nurses' ability to meet their professional and ethical obligations. We also share our thoughts on supporting nurses and others now, and ideas for needed healing for both individuals and organizations as we move forward. Finally, we argue for the need for substantive reform of institutional processes and systems that can deliver quality care in the future when faced with another devastating humanitarian and public health crises.

The Moral Distress of Nurses When Patients Forgo Treatment Because of Cost.

Nursing must recognize an ethical obligation to respond on behalf of these patients.

Challenging times: ethics, nursing and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Globally nurses and midwives are working hard to detect cases of COVID-19, to save lives or give comfort in the face of death, to educate themselves and the public about protective measures to stop the viral spread, while still caring for those not infected with the virus. In many countries nurses are working under virtual siege from this pandemic, with not enough resources or personal protective equipment, overwhelming numbers of patients, staff shortages, underprepared health systems and supply chain failures. Nurses and other health and emergency workers are suffering physical and emotional stress, and moral distress from conflicting professional values. They are faced with unpalatable and complex ethical issues in practice, with moral conflicts, high levels of acuity and patient deaths, and long working hours. A rising number of nurses are infected with SARS-CoV-2 or dying in the line of duty. Nurses need strong moral courage, stamina and resilience to work on the front lines of the pandemic, often while separated from their loved ones.

Ethical Conflicts Experienced by Nurses in Geriatric Hospitals in South Korea: "If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen".

Ethical conflicts among nurses can undermine nurses' psychological comfort and compromise the quality of patient care. In the last decade, several empirical studies on the phenomena related to ethical conflicts, such as ethical dilemmas, issues, problems, difficulties, or challenges, have been reported; however, they have not always deeply explored the meaning of ethical conflicts experienced by nurses in geriatric care. This study aims to understand the lived experiences of ethical conflict of nurses in geriatric hospitals in South Korea. A phenomenological study was conducted. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were performed with nine registered nurses who cared for elderly patients in geriatric hospitals in South Korea between August 2015 and January 2016. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) confusing values for good nursing, (2) distress resulting from not taking required action despite knowing about a problem, and (3) avoiding ethical conflicts as a last resort. It was found that for geriatric nurses to cope with ethical conflicts successfully, clear ethical guidance, continuing ethics education to improve ethical knowledge and moral behaviors, and a supportive system or program to resolve ethical conflicts involving nurses should be established.

Ethical Challenges Encountered by Clinical Trials Nurses: A Grounded Theory Study.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the ethical challenges experienced by oncology clinical trials nurses (OCTNs) during the management of CTs and to examine how they resolve those conflicts. SAMPLE & SETTING: 12 licensed RNs who had been practicing as full- or part-time OCTNs for a minimum of two years at various academic medical centers in the United States. METHODS & VARIABLES: Classical grounded theory (CGT), an inductive methodology used to explore a social process in which little is known and to develop a theory grounded in the data, was used, in addition to CGT data analysis strategies. RESULTS: CGT data analysis revealed the OCTNs' main concern (implementing an undefined job) and the way in which the OCTNs resolve this concern through the process of figuring it out. Figuring it out consists of learning as they go, utilizing their assets, standing their ground, and managing hope. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Although some nursing research provides examples of ethical challenges OCTNs might encounter in practice, there is little information regarding how nurses manage those encounters. A theoretical understanding of the OCTNs' experiences managing ethical challenges fills a gap in the nursing literature and provides a framework for how OCTNs manage and respond to challenges in professional practice.

Moral Distress, Mattering, and Secondary Traumatic Stress in Provider Burnout: A Call for Moral Community.

Burnout incurs significant costs to health care organizations and professionals. Mattering, moral distress, and secondary traumatic stress are personal experiences linked to burnout and are byproducts of the organizations in which we work. This article conceptualizes health care organizations as moral communities-groups of people united by a common moral purpose to promote the well-being of others. We argue that health care organizations have a fundamental obligation to mitigate and prevent the costs of caring (eg, moral distress, secondary traumatic stress) and to foster a sense of mattering. Well-functioning moral communities have strong support systems, inclusivity, fairness, open communication, and collaboration and are able to protect their members. In this article, we address mattering, moral distress, and secondary traumatic stress as they relate to burnout. We conclude that leaders of moral communities are responsible for implementing systemic changes that foster mattering among its members and attend to the problems that cause moral distress and burnout.

Freirean Conscientization With Critical Care Nurses to Reduce Moral Distress and Increase Perceived Empowerment: A Pilot Study.

Moral distress in nursing has been linked to a relative lack of power in the workplace. We designed and piloted a Freirean-based conscientization intervention to raise awareness and address disempowerment with 13 critical care nurses in the US Midwest who recently experienced moral distress. A transformative, mixed-methods, pre/post design was used with convergence of qualitative and quantitative data. Results showed improved moral distress and mixed results in perceived personal and group empowerment. Further study is warranted to test conscientization-based interventions that give nurses opportunity collectively to develop empowered responses to situations that lead to moral distress.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, and the Nursing Imperative.

This essay speaks to the legacy value of nurses' caring for all people, no matter how they feel about the person's values or lifestyle, including the current issues around gender identity and sexual orientation. This legacy is deeply imbedded in the moral ethics of nursing and supports the proposition that if there isn't caring, it isn't nursing.

Moral Distress: Defined and Described by Neonatal and Pediatric Critical Care Nurses in a Quaternary Care Free-Standing Pediatric Hospital.

BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Despite a growing population of chronically and acute critically ill neonatal and pediatric patients, there were few published articles related to moral distress as experienced by nurses caring for these patients. OBJECTIVES/AIMS: The aim of this study was to define moral distress based on the perceptions and experiences of neonatal and pediatric critical care nurses. METHODS: A qualitative descriptive study using focus group methodology was undertaken. All nurses with 2 or more years of experience from the 4 neonatal and pediatric intensive care units in a large 404-bed urban pediatric hospital located in the northeast were invited to attend 1 of 15 audio-recorded focus groups lasting 60 to 90 minutes. Once data were transcribed, conventional content analysis was used to develop the definition and categories of moral distress. RESULTS: Nurse participants defined moral distress as "patient care situations where there is a mismatch or incongruity between expected behaviors of the nurse and his/her personal values/beliefs in the neonatal/pediatric critical care setting." The 2 overarching categories that emerged from the data were patient-focused factors and nurse-focused factors. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS: Understanding how neonatal and pediatric critical care nurses define moral distress and what contributes to its development is foundational to developing targeted strategies for nursing support and education, with the goal of creating a culture of moral resiliency.

Nurses experiences of ethical dilemmas: A review.

BACKGROUND: Nursing care is rapidly evolving due to the advanced technological and medical development, and also due to an increased focus on standardization and the logic of production, permeating today's hospital cultures. Nursing is rooted in a holistic approach with an ethical obligation to maintain and respect the individual's dignity and integrity. However, working within time limits and heavy workload leads to burnout and ethical insensitivity among nurses, and may challenge nurses' options to act on the basis of ethical and moral grounds in the individual care situation. AIM: The aim of this study is to describe and discuss ethical dilemmas described and experienced by nurses in clinical practice today. METHOD: The study was performed as a literature review following the matrix method allowing to synthesize literature across methodological approaches. A literature search was performed, including relevant studies published between 2011 and 2016. A total of 15 articles were included and analyzed focusing on their description of ethical dilemmas. ETHICAL CONSIDERATION: We have considered and respected ethical conduct when performing a literature review, respecting authorship and referencing sources. RESULTS: The analysis revealed three themes, relating to important aspects of nursing practice, such as the nurse-patient relationship, organizational structures, and collaboration with colleagues. The findings are summarized in the following three themes: (1) balancing harm and care, (2) work overload affecting quality, and (3) navigating in disagreement. Ethically difficult situations are evident across settings and in very diverse environments from neonatal care to caring for the older people. Organizational structures and being caught in-between professional values, standardization, and busyness was evident, revealing the complexity of nursing practice and the diversity of ethical dilemmas, concerns, and distress experienced by clinical nurses. CONCLUSION: Nursing practice is challenged by organizational structures and the development of the health care system, inhibiting nurses' professional decision-making and forcing them to compromise basic nursing values.

Phronesis of nurses: A response to moral distress.

BACKGROUND: As moral action could help nurses reduce moral distress, it is necessary to carry out qualitative research to present the experiences in which nurses apply moral action. AIM: To describe and analyze the phronesis applied by nurses in the face of moral distress. RESEARCH DESIGN: The research participants were invited to participate in in-depth interviews. The research materials were based on the stories described by the research participants and recorded by means of first-person narrative. Narrative analysis was applied to interpret the nurses' phronesis. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-seven nurses from Taiwan. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: The Institutional Review Board of the Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in Taiwan confirmed that this study passed the research ethical review. FINDINGS: According to the narrative analysis results, the phenomenon of moral distress contains difficulty, action, and idea transformation. The difficulty is the source of moral distress, action is the practice of moral courage, and idea transformation is the nurse's emotional movement. Action and idea transformation are collectively called phronesis in this study. DISCUSSION: Moral distress refers to a state of suffering caused by situations in which nurses cannot carry out their ethical intentions. Phronesis is the process through which nurses take actions and relocate the subjects and is an ethical way to find relief from moral distress. Starting with empathy and respectful attitudes arising from self-reflection, nurses may be helped to get relief from the suffering of moral distress. CONCLUSION: Phronesis can help nurses positively face the emotional strain of moral distress. This article puts forward a narrative method to complete the four steps of phronesis: write about the care experience, identify the difficulties in the stories, seek the possibility of action, and form a new care attitude, which could help nurses learn to reduce their moral distress.

Relationships between organizational and individual support, nurses' ethical competence, ethical safety, and work satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: Organizations and nurse leaders do not always effectively support nurses' ethical competence. More information is needed about nurses' perceptions of this support and relevant factors to improve it. PURPOSE: The aim of the study was to examine relationships between nurses' perceived organizational and individual support, ethical competence, ethical safety, and work satisfaction. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted. Questionnaires were distributed to nurses (n = 298) working in specialized, primary, or private health care in Finland. Descriptive statistics, multifactor analysis of variance, and linear regression analysis were used to test the relationships. RESULTS: The nurses reported low organizational and individual support for their ethical competence, whereas perceptions of their ethical competence, ethical safety, and work satisfaction were moderate. There were statistically significant positive correlations between both perceived individual and organizational support, and ethical competence, nurses' work satisfaction, and nurses' ethical safety. CONCLUSIONS: Organizational and individual support for nurses' ethical competence should be strengthened, at least in Finland, by providing more ethics education and addressing ethical problems in multiprofessional discussions. Findings confirm that organizational level support for ethical competence improves nurses' work satisfaction. They also show that individual level support improves nurses' sense of ethical safety, and both organizational and individual support strengthen nurses' ethical competence. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: These findings should assist nurse leaders to implement effective support practices to strengthen nurses' ethical competence, ethical safety, and work satisfaction.

Caring for Tuberculosis Patients: Understanding the Plight of Nurses at a Regional Hospital in Limpopo Province, South Africa.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease which is caused by a relatively large, non-motile, rod-shaped pathogen called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB is a major cause of illness and death worldwide, especially in Asia and Africa. Despite the fact that TB is a curable illness, the tragedy is that TB remains the biggest killer in the world as a single pathogen. The aim of this study was to determine the experiences of nurses caring for TB patients at a regional hospital in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive designs were used. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used to select the participants. The personal experiences of six nurses with more than five years' experience caring for TB patients at a regional hospital were explored, and it was guided by data saturation. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi's method. Trustworthiness was ensured and ethical considerations were observed in this study. The research findings revealed six major themes from the raw data: challenges of the working environment, problems impacting on the quality of nursing care, fear, anxiety, stress and risk of contracting infection, nurses' perceptions towards patients, support structure available in the hospital, and support needs for the nurses. Therefore, there is an urgent need to address the challenges experienced by nurses caring for communicable diseases through provision of a positive practice work environment.

Ethical Awareness Scale: Replication Testing, Invariance Analysis, and Implications.

Background: Ethical awareness (EA) enables nurses to recognize the ethical implications of all practice actions and is an important component of safe and quality nursing care. Evidence suggests that nurses may sometimes feel underprepared to recognize and address ethical issues as they arise in practice. The Ethical Awareness Scale (EAS) presented strong evidence as a psychometrically sound measure of EA in critical care nurses in pilot testing. The present study extends earlier work by (a) expanding the sample, (b) replicating the psychometric analyses, (c) more deeply investigating data-to-model fit, and (d) providing guidelines for the interpretation of EAS scores and subsequent practice-focused and educational interventions. Methods: This study utilized two sets of cross-sectional EAS survey results with ICU nurse respondents from two hospitals in New England. Invariance testing using simple OLS regression was conducted between the item estimates of both samples. The final Rasch analysis utilized a rating scale model. Finally, a score interpretation framework was developed. Results: 240 participants were included in the combined analysis. Nurses were predominantly female (93.1%), aged 25-35 (39.9%), and Bachelor's degree prepared (73.4%). Mean levels of EA were in the low/moderate range (M = 36.2/54). Cronbach's alpha of 0.86 was achieved. The Rasch analysis demonstrated a variable map structure consistent with the hypothesized item order, scoring categories that were sufficiently used by respondents, and adequate model-data fit. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the EAS is a psychometrically sound and meaningful measure of EA in critical care nurses with item difficulty estimates that are invariant across samples. A raw score on the EAS can be practically interpreted, given the theoretical description of what a nurse at each level of the scale's continuum may "look" like in terms of EA using the diagnostic interpretation table. These findings have implications for nursing education and practice.

Palliative Care and Moral Distress: An Institutional Survey of Critical Care Nurses.

BACKGROUND: The need for palliative care in the intensive care unit is increasing. Whether gaps and variations in palliative care education and use are associated with moral distress among critical care nurses is unknown. OBJECTIVES: To examine critical care nurses' perceived knowledge of palliative care, their recent experiences of moral distress, and possible relationships between these variables. METHODS: In this quantitative, descriptive study, survey questionnaires were distributed to 517 critical care nurses across 7 intensive care units at an academic health center in Virginia. Validated instruments were used to measure participants' perceptions of palliative care in their practice setting and their recent experiences of moral distress. RESULTS: A total of 167 completed questionnaires were analyzed. Fewer than 40% of respondents reported being highly competent in any palliative care domain. Most respondents had little palliative care education, with 38% reporting none in the past 2 years. Most respondents reported moral distress during the study period, and moral distress levels differed significantly on the basis of perceived use of palliative care (P = .03). Respondents who perceived less frequent use of palliative care tended to experience higher levels of moral distress. CONCLUSIONS: Many critical care nurses do not feel prepared to provide palliative care. When palliative care access is perceived as inadequate, nurses may be more apt to experience moral distress. Health system leaders should prioritize palliative care training for critical care nurses and their colleagues and empower them to reduce barriers to palliative care.

Beliefs and challenges held by medical staff about providing emergency care to migrants: an international systematic review and translation of findings to the UK context.

OBJECTIVE: Migration has increased globally. Emergency departments (EDs) may be the first and only contact some migrants have with healthcare. Emergency care providers' (ECPs) views concerning migrant patients were examined to identify potential health disparities and enable recommendations for ED policy and practice. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-synthesis of published findings from qualitative studies. DATA SOURCES: Electronic databases (Ovid Medline, Embase (via Ovid), PsycINFO (via OVID), CINAHL, Web of Science and PubMed), specialist websites and journals were searched. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Studies employing qualitative methods published in English. SETTINGS: EDs in high-income countries. PARTICIPANTS: ECPs included doctors, nurses and paramedics. TOPIC OF ENQUIRY: Staff views on migrant care in ED settings. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Data that fit the overarching themes of 'beliefs' and 'challenges' were extracted and coded into an evolving framework. Lines of argument were drawn from the main themes identified in order to infer implications for UK policy and practice. RESULTS: Eleven qualitative studies from Europe and the USA were included. Three analytical themes were found: challenges in cultural competence; weak system organisation that did not sufficiently support emergency care delivery; and ethical dilemmas over decisions on the rationing of healthcare and reporting of undocumented migrants. CONCLUSION: ECPs made cultural and organisational adjustments for migrant patients, however, willingness was dependent on the individual's clinical autonomy. ECPs did not allow legal status to obstruct delivery of emergency care to migrant patients. Reported decisions to inform the authorities were mixed; potentially leading to uncertainty of outcome for undocumented migrants and deterring those in need of healthcare from seeking treatment. If a charging policy for emergency care in the UK was introduced, it is possible that ECPs would resist this through fears of widening healthcare disparities. Further recommendations for service delivery involve training and organisational support.