scholarly journals Confronting moral distress in Nursing: recognizing nurses as moral agents

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (spe) ◽  
pp. 33-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco A. Carnevale
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Moral Distress ◽  
Ethical Standards ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Moral Engagement

The concept of moral distress has brought forth a substantively different way of understanding some of the difficulties confronted by nurses in their practice. This concept highlights that nurses' distress can be an indication of nurses' conscientious moral engagement with their professional practice that has confronted practices or an environment that impedes them from acting according to their own ethical standards. Moral distress can be an indicator of problems in nurses' practice environments. This concept is described and related to moral agency in nursing practice. Selected research on moral distress is reviewed, followed by a discussion of recommendations for addressing this problem.

scholarly journals Enhancing Nurse Moral Agency: The Leadership Promise of Doctor of Nursing Practice Preparation

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Grace
Keyword(s):  
Transformational Learning ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Ethics Education ◽  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Moral Distress ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Nurse Leaders ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Doctor Of Nursing Practice ◽  
Ethical Content

An expansive and growing body of literature documents the problem of nurses’ moral distress when they are unable to carry out actions that they perceive to be in the best interests of patients. Further, nurse leaders and educators are not always well prepared to help nurses to develop moral agency. Moral agency is the ability to provide good care and overcome obstacles to good practice. One reason for the lack of preparation is that ethics education in academia, and in ongoing nurse education, has been inconsistent or has focused more on dilemmas than the ubiquitous everyday practice issues. The purpose of this article is to discuss goals of the nursing profession, contemporary challenges to good nursing practice, and leadership from those educated as Doctors of Nursing Practice (DNP). The author argues that the proliferation of (DNP) programs, focused as they are on leadership in practice settings, presents a unique opportunity to prepare nurse leaders who are, first and foremost, skilled and knowledgeable about the ethical content of everyday nursing practice. An ‘ethics matrix’ is described and proposed as an essential base for DNP education upon which all other knowledge is built, with specific discussion of types of leadership and the relationship of transformational learning to transformational leadership.

scholarly journals Relationships, Authority, and Reasons: A Second-Personal Account of Corporate Moral Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Alan D. Morrison ◽  
Rita Mota ◽  
William J. Wilhelm
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Corporate Communications ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Corporate Punishment

We present a second-personal account of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to the first-personal approach adopted in much of the existing literature, which concentrates on the corporation’s ability to identify moral reasons for itself. Our account treats relationships and communications as the fundamental building blocks of moral agency. The second-personal account rests on a framework developed by Darwall. Its central requirement is that corporations be capable of recognizing the authority relations that they have with other moral agents. We discuss the relevance of corporate affect, corporate communications, and corporate culture to the second-personal account. The second-personal account yields a new way to specify first-personal criteria for moral agency, and it generates fresh insights into the reasons those criteria matter. In addition, a second-personal analysis implies that moral agency is partly a matter of policy, and it provides a fresh perspective on corporate punishment.

scholarly journals Moral distress: Ethically appropriate actions

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (Supplement_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
E Maeckelberghe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Distress ◽  
Original Description ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Moral Question ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Given ◽  
Psychological Dimensions ◽  
Original Concept ◽  
Ethical Situation

Abstract Andrew Jameton in 1984 coined the concept of moral distress as: “knowing what to do in an ethical situation, but not being allowed to do it” This original description presupposes that the right moral act can be identified and precludes situations of doubt and uncertainty. The 1984 definition emphasizes barriers that make it impossible for someone to do what they ought to do. Whereas Jameton in a revision in 2013 of his original concept emphasized reduction of the psychological dimensions, Peter& Liaschenko stress the element of moral agency. Moral distress then is a threat to the moral integrity of the professional. This requires three-step ananlysis: first, what is the moral question?; two, what are morally adeguate answers to this question?; three, what ethically appropriate actions are under pressure in the given situation? This will be illustrated with examples from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Best Practices for Developing Specialty Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Finnell ◽  
Elizabeth Thomas ◽  
Wendy Nehring ◽  
Kris McLoughlin ◽  
Carol Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Scope Of Practice ◽  
Entire Field ◽  
Standards Of Practice ◽  
Professional Nursing ◽  
Standards Documents

Nursing specialization involves focusing on nursing practice in an identified specific area within the entire field of professional nursing. A defined specialty scope of practice statement and standards of professional practice, with accompanying competencies, are unique to each nursing specialty. These documents help assure continued understanding and recognition of nursing’s diverse professional contributions. The purpose of this article is to demystify the process for specialty nurses who are creating or revising their specialty nursing scope and standards of practice. We provide best practices for the developmental process based on our recently published scope and standards of specialty nursing practice. The conclusion provides strategies to disseminate scope and standards documents to appropriate stakeholders.

Moral agents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinit Haksar
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Concern For Others

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality. This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality. So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations. According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for remorse and concern for others. Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the essential conditions of moral agency.

‘This Happens All the Time’: Organizations, Rationalization and Ethical Dilemmas in Engineering

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 985-1003
Author(s):  
Tracey L Adams
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Ethical Standards ◽  
Professional Misconduct ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Impact

Given their positions of public trust, regulated professions are legally required to uphold ethical standards, and ensure that professional practice protects the public. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that professionals do not always behave ethically. One proposed solution is greater organizational surveillance; however, research from a neo-Weberian perspective encourages scepticism about such arguments. Organizations may not only fail to stop professionals from violating ethical codes, but rationalizing organizations might actively encourage such violations in the name of efficiency. This article explores the impact of organizations and rationalization on professional misconduct through a mixed-methods study of professional engineers in Ontario, Canada. Findings suggest engineers are impacted by rationalization, and that those with less decision-making authority experience pressures discouraging practice in the public interest.

The Uses and Abuses of Narrative for Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Meretoja
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Blind Side ◽  
Ethical Evaluation ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Narrative Imagination ◽  
Culture Of Silence ◽  
The Continuum

Chapter 4 tests hermeneutic narrative ethics as a lens for analyzing the (ab)uses of narrative for life in Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau (2007, The Blind Side of the Heart), exploring how narrative practices expand and diminish the space of possibilities in which moral agents act and suffer. It demonstrates how narrative “in-betweens” bind people together, through dialogic narrative imagination, and can promote exclusion that amounts to annihilation. It addresses the necessity of storytelling for survival, and a transgenerational culture of silence that leads to the repetition of harmful emotional-behavioral patterns. It explores the continuum from being able to tell one’s own stories to violently imposed narrative identities and suggests that moral agency requires a minimum narrative sense of oneself as a being worthy and capable of goodness. The chapter argues that the ethical evaluation of narrative practices must be contextual—sensitive to how they function in particular sociohistorical worlds.

scholarly journals Corporate Moral Agency and the Responsibility to Respect Human Rights in the UN Guiding Principles: Do Corporations Have Moral Rights?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia H WERHANE
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations

AbstractIn 2011 the United Nations (UN) published the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework’ (Guiding Principles). The Guiding Principles specify that for-profit corporations have responsibilities to respect human rights. Do these responsibilities entail that corporations, too, have basic rights? The contention that corporations are moral persons is problematic because it confers moral status to an organization similar to that conferred to a human agent. I shall argue that corporations are not moral persons. But as collective bodies created, operated, and perpetuated by individual human moral agents, one can ascribe to corporations secondary moral agency as organizations. This ascription, I conclude, makes sense of the normative business responsibilities outlined in the Guiding Principles without committing one to the view that corporations are full moral persons.

Individual Moral Perspectives of Professional Nurses

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Ann DeLuca Havens,
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Moral Distress ◽  
Psychometric Assessment ◽  
Ethical Ideologies ◽  
Professional Nursing Practice ◽  
Professional Nurses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Position Questionnaire ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Moral Stance

Exploring nurses’ moral perspectives may provide insight into the varying degrees of caring that nurses integrate into their professional nursing practice. Building an understanding of nurses’ moral perspectives also can illuminate the moral experiences of professional nurses who endorse different ethical ideologies, as well as the consequences, such as moral distress, of such experiences. Psychometric assessment of the Modified Ethics Position Questionnaire (MEPQ) yielded a reliable and valid measure of the moral perspectives of practicing nurses. Findings suggest that respondents assumed that desirable consequences can, with the right ethical action, always be obtained. Whether this is a common moral stance among professional nurses requires further inquiry.

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