Moral distress among social workers: The role of insufficient resources

Abstract

The present study examined moral distress among Finnish social workers and the role of perceived resource insufficiencies in explaining it. The aim was to shed light on this understudied phenomenon in the field of social welfare. The study focused on work‐related moral distress, defined as impaired wellbeing that is connected to the continual inability to implement actions that one considers morally appropriate. The survey data were collected with an electronic questionnaire between the years 2011 and 2012. The respondents (n = 817) were social workers in the public social welfare services and the overall response rate was 46.5 per cent. Nearly 11 per cent of the respondents reported experiencing moral distress and perceived resource insufficiencies strongly explained this experience. Moreover, social workers with moral distress reported that they were less willing to continue in their post, were more frequently on sick leave and had positive work‐related experiences less often than their colleagues who did not experience moral distress. Key Practitioner Message: ● The concept of moral distress is useful in describing the experiences of social welfare workers when they are unable to practise their profession according to their moral code and the emotional burden related to this inability; ● Perceived resource insufficiencies are strongly associated with experiences of moral distress among frontline social workers; ● Social workers experiencing moral distress are less willing to continue in their work, take sick leave more often and less frequently have positive experiences related to their work.

The Role of Moral Suffering (Moral Distress and Moral Injury) in Police Compassion Fatigue and PTSD: An Unexplored Topic

“…Further, McCarthy and Deady ( 2008 ) argued that moral distress is pervasive among caregiving professionals who are expected to make decisions and judgments—that encompass moral components—during complex incidents. To date, caregiving professionals such as occupational therapists (Penny et al, 2016 ) and social workers (Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016 ) have emphasized the incapacitating role of moral distress on caregiving professionals' health, job performance, and wellbeing. As noted, moral distress has been studied in nurses, therapists, and social workers.…”

Autonomy and Protection in Self-neglect Work: The Ethical Complexity of Decision-making

“…Moral distress arises "when one knows the right thing to do, but institutional constraints make it nearly impossible to pursue the right course of action" (Jameton, 1984, p6). The practitioner knows what is morally appropriate but is prevented from implementing it (Lynch and Forde, 2016;Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016). As Weinberg (2009) notes, the concept is valuable "in tying the personal with the political by recognizing the institutional barriers that hamper practitioners from functioning in ways they would deem ethical as well as the emotional fall-out from those difficulties" (p2), although she cautions that the paradoxical nature of social work, and the likelihood that ethical trespass may ensue regardless of what decision is made, mean that no single response is likely to be entirely morally right.…”

Social Workers’ Experience of Moral Distress

“…The only study we found on social workers and moral distress explored whether social welfare workers experienced moral distress due to insufficient resources (Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016) and the results showed that of those who experienced moral distress, 42.4 % wanted to leave their jobs (Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016). The respondents reported frequently being unable to perform their role in a manner they would have liked and they were compelled to work in opposition to their professional moral code causing them moral distress (Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016).…”