Nurses’ Experiences of Moral Conflicts in the Educational and Medical Centers of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in 2019

The health care environment is changing rapidly, and nurses are exposed to a variety of ethical issues and moral conflicts. Therefore, the present study aimed to explain the experiences of nurses regarding moral conflicts in the educational and medical centers of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in 2019.

The present qualitative study was conducted in educational and medical centers of Mazandaran province. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Inclusion criteria include nurses with at least one year of work experience in the hospital who were willing to share their experiences of moral conflicts. Graneheim, U.H., and Lundman, B. Qualitative Content Analysis were used for analyzing the content.

In the present study, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 participants (16 women and 6 men). In total, 3 main themes and 11 sub-themes were extracted from the data analysis. The subjects include "organization-related factors", "factors related to effective communication", "dilemma of morality versus law".

According to the findings of this study, managers and other members of the healthcare team should support nurses in the face of ethical challenges. Furthermore, continuous in-service training courses should be provided for nursing staff.