ArticlePhilosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM2025
The collective experience of moral distress: a qualitative analysis of perspectives of frontline health workers during COVID-19.
Article in Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experiences of Loss and Grief Among Brazilian Frontline Healthcare Professionals During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis: A Grounded Theory Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Nurses' experiences of moral suffering: A qualitative interview study.Nursing ethics · 2026Article
- Factors influencing Iranian critical care nurses' initiation of resuscitation decisions: a qualitative study.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- Exploring the Relation Between Nursing Workload and Moral Distress, Burnout, and Turnover in Latvian Intensive Care Units: An Ecological Analysis of Parallel Data.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Health and Social Care Professionals' Experience of Psychological Safety Within Their Occupational Setting: A Thematic Synthesis Review.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2025Review
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Funding
Abstract
backgroundMoral distress is reported to be a critical force contributing to intensifying rates of anxiety, depression and burnout experienced by healthcare workers. In this paper, we examine the moral dilemmas and ensuing distress personally and collectively experienced by healthcare workers while caring for patients during the pandemic.
methodsData are drawn from free-text responses from a cross-sectional national online survey of Australian healthcare workers about the patient care challenges they faced.
resultsThree themes were derived from qualitative content analysis that illuminated the ways in which moral dilemmas and distress were relationally experienced by healthcare workers: (1) the moral ambiguity of how to care well for patients amid a rapidly changing work environment; (2) the distress of witnessing suffering shared between healthcare workers and patients; and (3) the distress of performing new forms of invisible work in the absence of institutional recognition. These findings reveal that moral distress was a strongly shared experience.
conclusionsFindings advance understandings of moral distress as a relational experience, collectively felt, constituted, and experienced by healthcare workers. Considering how to harness collective solidarity in effectively responding to moral distress experienced across the frontline healthcare workforce is critical.
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