Moral distress of workers from a pediatric ICU

Abstract

Pediatric intensive care units are complex hospital settings, which constitute a workplace with potential to generate moral distress for the employees. This research analyzes the moral distress faced by health professionals who are active in a pediatric intensive care units in the South of Brazil. It is a qualitative study in which dialectical hermeneutics was chosen as a method and epistemic matrix. The data shows perceptions of moral distress originated from the lack of material resources as well as the limits of humanization. The analysis of the category “moral distress: from the lack of resources to the limits of humanization” revealed a strong association between moral distress and ethical conflicts. Confrontation strategies foresee the fight for ethically committed public policies, recognition of the ethical dimension as a tool for a humanized working process and the application of this dimension in a healthcare network, as proposed by Mario Rovere.