The effect of moral distress experienced by COVID-19 intensive care nurses on their care behaviors

This descriptive study was conducted with 104 nurses working in Adana City Training and Research Hospital who agreed to participate in the study to investigate the impact of moral problems of nurses working in COVID -19 intensive care units on their caring behavior. Verbal consent was obtained from the Ethics Committee Noninvasive Clinical Research of Çukurova University, the Provincial Health Directorate, and the participants to conduct the study. The data of the study were collected between 04/04/2022 and 04/07/2022. The data collection forms used in the study were the Informed Consent Form, Personal Information Form, Moral Distress Scale Form, and Caring Behavior Scale Form, which were validated and reliable in Turkish. The SPSS program (IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0) was used for statistical analysis of the data. Independent Student's t-tests and Mann-Whitney U-tests were used in the evaluation of the obtained data. The mean total score of the Moral Distress Scale of nurses was 91.75±48.80; the mean total score of the Caring Behaviors Scale was found to be 5.49±0.45. In the study, the reliability coefficient of the Moral Distress Scale was found to be 0.824, and this value was 0.930 for the Caring Behaviors Scale, and both scales were found to have a high degree of reliability in this study. From the data obtained, no statistically significant relationship was found between the sociodemographic characteristics and working conditions of the nurses and the mean scores of the Moral Distress Scale and the Caring Behaviors Scale. The study found that those who wanted to leave nursing had high mean scores on the Moral Distress Scale. As a result, it was determined that nurses working in COVID-19 intensive care units experienced low levels of moral distress, their perceptions of caring for the patient and using appropriate care behaviors were positive, and the moral distress experienced by nurses had no effect on their care behaviors. Anahtar Sözcükler: Moral distress, Caring Behaviors, COVID-19, COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit, Nurse