ArticlePhilosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM2025
Moral distress among healthcare professionals in long-term care settings: a scoping review.
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 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Moral resilience in the face of ethical conflicts in hospital nursing practice: a qualitative study.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Effects of nursing professionalism, ethical issues experience, and hospital ethical climate on ethical nursing competence of nurses in long-term care hospitals: A cross-sectional study.Journal of Korean gerontological nursing · 2026Article
- Coping in crisis: a qualitative study of stress and resilience in Ontario's long-term care workforce.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Burnout and Moral Injury in Healthcare Workers: An Observational Study in a Romanian Chronic Care Hospital.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimTo explore the body of knowledge available regarding the moral distress of healthcare professionals in long-term care settings, focusing on influencing factors and strategies to cope with moral distress.
designScoping review.
methodsThis scoping review follows the guidelines of the PRISMA-ScR protocol (Tricco et al. 2018) Searches were done using a strategy that included MeSH terms and free text terms. DATA SOURCES: Data sources were PubMed, CINAHL, Psychinfo and Embase. Searches were done in October 2023 without any date restrictions.
resultsEight articles were included in this review. Moral distress can impact the wellbeing of healthcare professionals. Influencing factors of moral distress of health care professionals appeared to be lack of resources, lack of communication and incongruence with colleagues. Strategies to cope with moral distress were talking about ethical issues with others, receiving support from colleagues and managers, and seeking support from outside the team or organization. Individual healthcare professionals relied on their personal characteristics or their professional identity and used rationalization, distancing themselves or acceptance of the situation to cope with their moral distress.
conclusionMoral distress of healthcare professionals in long-term care settings appears not differently experienced than moral distress among healthcare professionals in other healthcare settings. This can be beneficial in learning from each other, but also raises the question whether moral distress is too broadly defined. IMPACT: This review addressed the scope and experiences of moral distress in long-term care settings. Future research can contribute to further insight into if and how specific features of long-term care are of influence on moral distress and formulate tailored strategies to lessen moral distress. REPORTING
methodPRISMA-ScR.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.