The relationships between moral distress and quality of nursing care in oncology nurses / 한국간호교육학회지

ABSTRACT

Purpose@#The study aimed to investigate the relationship between moral distress and the quality of nursing care. @*Methods@#This cross-sectional correlation study included nurses working at oncology nursing units of two secondary general hospitals in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, Korea. A total of 207 nurses participated. Moral distress was measured by the Moral Distress Scale-Revised Nurse Questionnaire and quality of nursing care was evaluated by the Quality of Oncology Nursing Care Scale. Data were collected from October 5 to 31, 2018. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, independent t-test, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. @*Results@#The quality of oncology nursing care showed a negative correlation with moral distress (r=-.19, p=.007). The factors affecting the quality of oncology nursing care were religion (β=-.22, p=.001), clinical experience in oncology units (β=.27, p=.007), and moral distress (β=-.16, p=.018). Moral distress showed a statistically significant predictive power of 13% in the regression model (F=8.70, p=<.001). @*Conclusion@#The findings of this study suggest that management of moral distress is important to increase the quality of oncology nursing care.