Moral Issues Paper

Moral distress is faced by the nurse when they are providing care to the patient and will have to negotiate ethical and moral dilemmas (Chinn & Kramer, 2010, p. 90). I had a patient who was 80-year-old non English speaking Hispanic female and had a discharge order at the change of shift. I worked night shift and our floor had 1:4 nurse: patient ratio. As soon as I got the report, my charge nurse wanted me to discharge this patient first. This is because we were full and she wanted me to get new patient once room was ready. As I went to the patient room, I communicated with her using telephone interpreter service to do her discharge teaching. I realized that she was not aware of the fact that she was going to get discharged. She was told by

It was already 8pm, and social worker were not available until the next day. So, I notified my charge nurse and then called the nursing supervisor asking for cab voucher. Apparently, our hospital stopped giving cab vouchers to the patient and she finally agreed to delay her discharge until morning when the social worker or her daughter comes back. I felt sorry for the patient that there was not any proper communication about her discharge. Then, I questioned myself, “Is this right?” and “Is this responsible?” (Chinn & Kramer, 2010, P. 98). I was morally distress because I knew that insurance was not going to pay her cost after being discharged by the physician. Hence, in this case legal requirements created moral distress. Things that need to happen so that the next time nurses will not experience moral distress in a similar situation would be to include the patient in the discharge plan before making any decisions and not making decisions in a hurry just because Emergency Room (ER) is busy. Also, if the patient was told earlier than may be her daughter would have been back by then to pick her up. Furthermore, moral distress can be prevented by not having discharge order at the change of shift