Conceptualising moral resilience for nursing practice

Abstract

The term ‘moral resilience’ has been gaining momentum in the nursing ethics literature. This may be due to it representing a potential response to moral problems such as moral distress. Moral resilience has been conceptualised as a factor that inhibits immoral actions, as a favourable outcome and as an ability to bounce back after a morally distressing situation. In this article, the philosophical analysis of moral resilience is developed by challenging these conceptualisations and highlighting the risks of such limiting perspectives. It is argued that moral resilience is best understood as a virtue with two associated vices, faintheartedness and rigidity. The intellectual virtue of practical wisdom is required to express resilience as a virtue. This understanding leads to recommendations for professional education, for practice and for further research.

The Moral Resilience of Young People Who Care

“…The young people sought to make moral judgements about what was 'right and good' for their family members (Jurchak and Pennington 2009, 78). Similar to caring professionals, their moral actions reflected a desire to provide compassionate care (Jurchak and Pennington 2009;Defilippis, Curtis, and Gallagher 2019). Their caring tasks included chaperoning their family members, monitoring personal care and intervening to protect them from harm.…”

“…Thus, a moral approach to care is not about 'adjudicating ethical dilemmas' but involves acting ethically on behalf of others (Hamington 2018, 310). Engaging in a situated and relational approach to care may have helped to facilitate the young people's moral resilience (Rushton 2016;Defilippis, Curtis, and Gallagher 2019). A previous study of young adult carers in England concluded that the caring role had stimulated their political consciousness (Heyman 2018).…”

“…Consideration of moral resilience is in line with the re-emergence of 'virtue ethics' in a recent debate, including within professional care (Clifford 2014). It is a necessary virtue for achieving nursing goals, notably comfort, dignity and quality of life (Defilippis, Curtis, and Gallagher 2019). Monteverde (2016) suggested that health trainees' moral resilience can be enhanced by ethics education.…”

“…It entails being realistic about situational constraints and recognising when circumstances are beyond individual control (Rushton 2016). Whilst moral resilience is essentially a character trait, it involves connecting to others and learning from moral challenges (Defilippis, Curtis, and Gallagher 2019;Rushton 2016).…”

Moral neutralization: Nurses' evolution in unethical climate workplaces

“…Based on our results gradually, some nurses become morally indifferent. Sala Defilippis et al, 2019 defined moral indifferent persons as one who sees the moral situation and has not any sense about it (61). The results of Choe et al in 2015 showed that nurses became morally indifferent due to high workload and time constraints (62).…”