Connie M. Ulrich – författare

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing’s professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called “heroic” by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide?  And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is “fair, good and right” in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves?  This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses.

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses'' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing’s professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called “heroic” by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide?  And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is “fair, good and right” in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves?  This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses. 

This is the first book on the market or within academia dedicated solely to moral distress among health professionals. It aims to bring conceptual clarity about moral distress and distinguish it from related concepts. Explicit attention is given to the voices and experiences of health care professionals from multiple disciplines and many parts of the world.  Contributors explain the evolution of the concept of moral distress, sources of moral distress including those that arise at the unit/team and organization/system level, and possible solutions to address moral distress at every level. A liberal use of case studies will make the phenomenon palpable to readers. This volume provides information not only for academia and educational initiatives, but also for practitioners and the research community, and will serve as a professional resource for courses in health professional schools, bioethics, and business, as well as in the hospital wards, intensive care units, long-term care facilities, hospice, and ambulatory practice sites in which moral distress originates.