Effectiveness of end-of-life care education on the moral distress of nurses in neonatal intensive care units

Moral distress is one of the major sources of stress for nurses who provide end-of-life care to infants. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of end-of-life care education on the Moral distress of nurses in neonatal intensive care units. In a clinical trial study with 66 nurses (33 control and 33 intervention groups), neonatal intensive care units in two hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences in 1396, At first, the control group in both centers was included in the study and completed Hamric's MDS-R questionnaires in three stages,pre-test, two weeks after the pre-test and one month after the pre-test. After collecting the questionnaires, the intervention group entered the study and after completing a pre-test questionnaire, participated in the End-of-Life Workshop, which was held in two consecutive sessions of two consecutive weeks. Their Moral distress were compared with the control group in the pre-test, immediately after intervention and 2 weeks after intervention (one month after the pre-test). The research units in the two groups of test and control were homogeneous for all demographic variables. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of moral distress before training (P = 0.226). After implementing the educational program, the morphology of the intervention group decreased to two weeks after the intervention (P = 0.013). Covariance test was performed to remove the effect of pre-test score. The results of this study indicate the effect of the end-of-life care program on decreasing the moral distress of NICU nurses. Use of this training program is recommended to managers and planners of educational programs.