engleski

Prevention of moral distress among nursing students

About moral distress among nurses is talking more often last few years - much more as an experiential phenomena and a lot less as a real and serious problem. Moral distress occurs as a result of incapability to express one's own opinion in situation of serious moral dilemmas or incapability to undertake certain actions that are consider being helpful for patient in specific situation. Sources of moral distress could be: bad interpersonal relationships, conflicts between medical doctors and nurses, bad working environment, mobbing at workplace and questions of euthanasia, dysthanasia, mysthanasia and orthothanasia. Reactions to moral distress could appear as physical, psychic and emotional problems, behavioural problems and changes in area of spirituality, religion or belief. A special problem about which very little is spoken is possibility of occurring moral distress among nursing students who possibly are not daily exposed to moral stress factors of working place, but are in the centre of relativisation of moral values in modern society, especially in countries in transition. Very strong source for occurrence of moral distress among them is conflict between adopted professional values during training and moral values that are alive in daily practice and with which they meet during clinical practice. Research that we conducted showed that moral relativism or opportunism in Croatian society is serious problem for nursing students. They learned during study, but they also live basic moral values: honesty, truth, righteousness and human relationship towards people (respecting dignity of human beings, respecting privacy, respecting data confidentiality etc.), but at the same time they are fully aware, because they experience that every day, that some other social "values" are appreciated: money, material goods, power and good connections. Basic problem that arises to teachers in nursing studies, and not just to ethic teachers, is: how to prepare young expert for different moral dilemmas which she/he will meet in practice, in which "theory" will surrender to "naked reality", how to deal with frustration, sense of powerlessness and stalemate, how to communicate in crisis and how to defend her/his belief. And finally – how to ensure patients' right to their own choice, right to autonomy and dignity, regardless of environment and situation default.

moral distress ; basic moral values ; nursing students ; ethics ; bioethics

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