Describe a distressing clinical experience you have had as a nurse when you either were involved in or witnessed care or behaviors that you would describe as unethical.

Ethical Reflective Analysis Brief

The experience of moral distress can be distinguished from the experience of moral dilemmas. In moral distress, a nurse knows the morally right course of action to take, but institutional structure and conflicts with colleagues create obstacles. A nurse who fails to act in the face of obstacles also may have reactive distress in addition to the initial distress. Both kinds of distress pose dilemmas about individual and collective moral responsibility. Coping with these dilemmas effectively requires taking at least some successful actions to resolve distress.

Instructions: For this assignment you are to reflect on a morally distressing clinical experience and use the template provided below .

1. Describe a distressing clinical experience you have had as a nurse when you either were involved in or witnessed care or behaviors that you would describe as unethical. Ensuring confidentiality in your description of the event, place, and persons, include in your description:

a. the setting in which the conflict occurred (e.g., ICU, hospital inpatient unit, LTC, OR)

b. disease or patient group (e.g., geriatric, cancer, NICU, dementia) or healthcare team (e.g., physician-nurse, nurse-nurse)

c. the type of conflict (e.g., withdrawal of life support, nutrition, hydration; HIPAA violation, pain management)

d. all those involved in the conflict (e.g., nurse, physician, patient, family member)

e. cultural factors identified as influencing the clinical experience (e.g., ethnicity, poverty)

2. How did this experience impact you as a nurse?

a. What emotions do you recall having in the aftermath of the situation (e.g., advocacy, anger, career change, guilt, betrayal, and so on)?

b. What were 3 actions that allowed you to move past this experience? If none, include 3 actions that may have been helpful (e.g. workplace support, etc.)

3. Identify 3 evidence based interventions that could be used to address moral distress. Use the (Browning, E.D., 2018) from Module 5 as one example of evidence based interventions.