Good death disrupted: Nurses' moral emotions navigating clinical and public health ethics during the first wave of COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

AimTo explore the moral emotions that frontline nurses navigated in endeavouring to ensure a ‘good death’ for hospital patients and care home residents during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic.BackgroundUnder normal circumstances, frontline staff are focused on clinical ethics, which foreground what is best for individuals and families. Public health crises such as a pandemic require staff to adapt rapidly to focus on what benefits communities, at times compromising individual well‐being and autonomy. Visitor restrictions when people were dying provided vivid exemplars of this ethical shift and the moral emotions nurses encountered with the requirement to implement this change.MethodsTwenty‐nine interviews were conducted with nurses in direct clinical care roles. Data were analysed thematically informed by the theoretical concepts of a good death and moral emotions.ResultsThe data set highlighted that moral emotions such as sympathy, empathy, distress and guilt were integral to the decisions participants described in striving for a good palliative experience. Four themes were identified in the data analysis: nurses as gatekeepers; ethical tensions and rule bending; nurses as proxy family members; separation and sacrifice.ConclusionsParticipants reflected on morally compromising situations and highlighted agency through emotionally satisfying workarounds and collegial deliberations that enabled them to believe that they were party to painful but morally justifiable decisions.Implications for the profession and patient careNurses are required to implement national policy changes that may disrupt notions of best practice and therefore be experienced as a moral wrong. In navigating the moral emotions accompanying this shift, nurses benefit from compassionate leadership and ethics education to support team cohesion enabling nurses to prevail.Public contributionTwenty‐nine frontline registered nurses participated in the qualitative interviews that inform this study.Reporting methodThe study adhered to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research checklist.