Moral distress and Nurse's Attitude toward Patient's Rights

Compliance with patient's rights is one of the most important components of providing humanitarian and moral care and nurses may be exposed to moral distress in defense of their rights. The present study was carried out aiming to determine the relationship between moral distress and nurses’ attitude towards patient's rights.
The present correlation study was carried out on 194 nurses from educational hospitals affiliated to South Khorasan University of Medical Sciences who were selected with convenience sampling method and selected from critical care units. The data gathering tool was a demographic questionnaire and Corly's moral distress questionnaire and nurse’s attitude towards patient's rights researcher-made questionnaires. Collected data was analyzed by SPSS 16 using descriptive and analytical statistics.
Ethical Considerations: Written consent was obtained from all participants. Additionally, all of them were assured of anonymity of the questionnaires and confidentiality of the information.
Findings: Between moral distress frequency and attitude toward patient's rights, there have been significant positive correlation (r=-0.5, P=0.04). Average score of moral distress in the severity (3.97±0.7) and frequency dimensions (3.6±0.68). The average attitude towards the rights of patients (4±0.8) was also reported. The relationship between moral distress and the number of years of service and age in nurses was significant (P Regarding the importance of moral distress in nurses, authorities should be sensitive to the views of nurses regarding respect for patient's rights and using strategies to improve nurse's viewpoints towards respecting patient's rights and positive impact on ethical distress.