Nursing Ethics Huddles to Decrease Moral Distress among Nurses in the Intensive Care Unit

Moral distress (MD) is an emotional and psychological response to morally challenging dilemmas. Moral distress is experienced frequently by nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU) and can result in emotional anguish, work dissatisfaction, poor patient outcomes, and high levels of nurse turnover. Opportunities to discuss ethically challenging situations may lessen MD and its associated sequela.

The purpose of this project was to develop, implement, and evaluate the impact of nursing ethics huddles on participants' MD, clinical ethics knowledge, work satisfaction, and patient care among ICU nurses.

The sample, 32 nurses from three ICU settings in an 800-bed tertiary academic medical center, participated in six nursing ethics huddles over a two-month period.

Alvita K. Nathaniel's Theory of Moral Reckoning guided development of the nursing ethics huddle process. The Moral Distress Thermometer was administered at three data points: baseline level of MD, and pre- and post-huddle to determine changes in the subjects' level of MD. Focused content analysis was used to analyze qualitative responses from questionnaires about the subjects' perception of the effect of the huddles on work satisfaction and patient care. Knowledge attainment was evaluated via open-ended short-answer questions.

Overall, use of nurse-ethicist-led nursing ethics huddles was associated with improved quality of work life, patient care, and clinical ethics knowledge. The change in pre- and post-nursing ethics huddles MD scores was statistically significant.