School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-3-2022
Abstract
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study on the triggers of hospital social workers’ moral distress at a large southern U.S. health system. Moral distress occurs when ethical conflict cannot be resolved in a way that aligns with an individual’s personal and professional values and ethics. Participants indicated that moral distress derives from both individual interactions and the culture and climate of health systems. For example, participants expressed how sources of moral distress derived from client-centered decisions, such as end-of-life care and patient autonomy; interpersonal dynamics, including team or supervisory conflict; structural issues, such as insurance barriers or internal hospital policies; and organizational values, such as perceptions of institutional support and validation. Implications of this research suggest that health systems need to foster positive ethical environments that nurture clinicians’ health and mental health through programs that aim to increase moral resilience, promote empowerment, and foster wellness.
Recommended Citation
Fantus, S., Cole, R., & Hawkins, L. (2022). “The hierarchy is your constraint:” a qualitative investigation of social workers’ moral distress across a US health system. Social Work in Health Care, 61(6-8), 387-411. https://doi.org/10.1080/00981389.2022.2128156
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Social Work in Health Care
DOI
10.1080/00981389.2022.2128156
Comments
© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & France Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.