Synopsis

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare and contributes to healthcare worker burnout, turnover, and withdrawal from patient care. Moral distress can arise due to morally troubling everyday ethics issues or clinical cases we carry with us. In this presentation, Dr. Morley will provide a brief overview of the concept of moral distress and, through a series of cases, disentangle stakeholders’ perspectives and concepts related to moral distress. Dr. Morley will argue that moral compromise is central to alleviating the negative effects of moral distress and successful moral compromise requires a willingness to understand others’ perspectives and values.

Speaker

Dr Georgina Morley is Nurse Ethicist and Director of the Nursing Ethics Program at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA. As Director of the Nursing Ethics Program, Dr. Morley leads nursing ethics education and moral distress support programming across the Cleveland Clinic healthcare system.

Georgina is an internationally recognized expert on moral distress and nursing ethics, is an empirical researcher and ethics consultant (> 400 ethics consults). In addition to serving on the clinical ethics consultation service, Georgina also provides embedded ethics support to the Heart Failure Section and is part of the Advanced Heart Failure Therapeutics Committee.