The relationship between moral distress levels and ethical climate perceptions of PICU nurses

The organizational climate in paediatric intensive care units is specific to the conditions of the patient, and there may be a relationship between the ethical climate perception and moral distress levels of the nurses working in this unit.

The research aim was to examine the relationship between the moral distress levels and their perceptions of hospital ethical climate of paediatric intensive care unit nurses.

This research was aimed a descriptive, cross-sectional and correlational type with 239 paediatric intensive care unit nurses of public, university and training and research hospitals in Turkey. Research data were evaluated with mean, Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis.

The total score of moral distress scale was 106.36 ± 53.63, and of the hospital ethical climate scale was 100.60 ± 14.41. A moderate negative relationship was found between nurses' moral distress levels and ethical climate perceptions, ethical climate perception explained moral distress levels with a 12% variance and this significance came from the physicians sub-dimension.

The moral distress levels of paediatric intensive care nurses were below the average, and their ethical climate perceptions were above the average. It was seen that the physicians sub-dimension was an important explanatory on the total moral distress.

In order to eliminate the moral distress arising from the hospital ethical climate, practices should be developed to increase the cooperation between nursing and physicians.