Background:
Nurses and students face a demanding and fluid health care system that can present overwhelming challenges. Moral distress is a challenge encountered by students who experience complex situations. Certain virtues such as moral courage and moral resilience are necessary to navigate around this phenomenon.
Method:
Using a descriptive correlational study design, a convenience sample of nursing students distributed among three sites were surveyed using three tools: The Moral Distress Thermometer (MDT), the Connor-Davidson Moral Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the Moral Courage Scale for Physicians (MCSP).
Results:
Students reported mild levels of moral distress (
M
= 2.73,
SD
= 1.9). Moral resilience was significantly correlated with moral courage, age, and students having a previous degree.
Conclusion:
Interventions to cultivate moral resilience in nursing curricula are necessary. Valid instruments to measure moral resilience and moral distress in nursing students should be investigated further.
[
J Nurs Educ
. 2020;59(7):392–395.]
This concept analysis helps fill the gap for nursing students transitioning into a professional role as well as clarifying a nursing student's role in patient care.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.