Comparison of Moral Distress Severity between Pediatric Ward and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Nurses

Background and Ethics is an integral part of medical and nursing professions, and care in pediatric ward is different from other wards due to patients’ age and sensitivity of their medical conditions. Therefore, we aimed to compare the severity of moral distress among nurses working in pediatric wards and pediatric intensive care units.
This descriptive comparative study was performed in 111 nurses working in pediatric wards and pediatric intensive care units of selected hospitals affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, in 2017. Data were collected using a demographic checklist and Corley’s Moral Distress Scale. To analyze the data, we used descriptive statistics and inferential tests such as Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis.
In this study, moral distress severity in 75% of the nurses in pediatric wards was low, and in 25%, it was at a moderate level. In 58.8% of pediatric intensive care unit nurses, the severity of this condition was low, and in 41.2%, it was moderate. In other words, the average severity of moral distress in the pediatric ward nurses was 37.48, and in the pediatric intensive care unit nurses, it was 58.02. The comparison of severity of moral distress among nurses working in these two wards showed a significant difference (P The results indicate a higher moral distress level in pediatric intensive care unit nurses than in nurses of pediatric wards. Therefore, professional ethics education planners are suggested to develop professional ethics workshops based on the needs and religious ethics and using advice from Islamic experts.