Moral Sensitivity and Delivering Bad News Skills: A Study on Critical Care Unit Nurses

Delivering bad news to the patient and his/her family can pose moral challenge s to the nurses. This study, therefore, aimed to determine the relationship between moral sensitivity of the nurses working in critical care units and their skills of delivering bad news.
This cross - sectional study was conducted on 222 nurses working in critical care units (ICU , CCU, NICU and Dialysis) of the hospitals affiliated to the Medical University of South Khorasan province. The participants were selected by convenience sampling. Data were collected through a questionnaire which consisted of three parts: demographic info rmation; Spikes’ 20 - question questionnaire for the skills of delivering bad news; and a 25-question questionnaire regarding moral sensitivity. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS 16 software.
Ethical Considerations: T he participants were provided with the full information about the objectives of the study and how to answer the questionnaires. Verbal informed consent was ob tained.
Findings: There was a significant positive correlation between moral sensibility and the skill of delivering bad news (P=0.04 , r=0.5). The mean total of nurses’ skills of delivering bad news was 3.5 ± 0.8 out of 5. The mean for psychological dimension was (3.6 ± 0.8) and for environmental dimension was (3.41 ± 0.77). The mean total of nurses’ moral sensibility was 3 ± 0.6 out of 4. In vestigating the mean moral sensitivity based on separation of its components indicated the highest mean for the moral behavior 3.3±0.41) and the lowest mean for respect for patients (2.5±0.65). The relationship between moral sensitivity and the work exper ience and the age of the nurses was also significant (P The findings indicate that nurses w ho were more sensitive had more skills when faced with such moral situations . It is recommended that hospital administrators, considering the nurses’ level of moral sensitivity, take some measures regarding teaching communication skills in such special cir cum stances as delivering bad news.