Developing Abilities to Navigate Through the Grey Zones in Complex Environments: Nurses’ Reasons for Applying to a Clinical Ethics Residency for Nurses

Background and Purpose Nurses face complex ethical issues in practice and have to determine appropriate actions. An inability to conceptualize or follow a preferred course of action can give rise to moral uncertainty or moral distress. Both moral uncertainty and moral distress are problematic for nurses and their patients. A program designed to increase nurse confidence in moral decision making, the clinical ethics residency for nurses (CERN), was offered selectively to nurses affiliated with two academic medical centers. This is a report of the analysis of their application essays. Design Over a 3-year period, 67 application essays were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Applicants comprised one third advanced practice nurses (APNs) and two thirds staff nurses. They were asked to describe their reasons for interest in the CERN and how they would apply the knowledge gained. Methods For conventional content analyses, no theoretical presumptions are used; rather, codes are identified from the data in an iterative manner and eventually collapsed into themes. Initially, broad themes were identified by the CERN team. Subsequently, in-depth and recursive readings were completed by a subset of three members, resulting in refinement of themes and subthemes. Findings The overarching theme identified was “developing abilities to navigate through the ‘grey zones’ in complex environments.” Three subthemes were: (a) nurses encountering patients who are chronically critically ill, culturally diverse, and presenting with complex circumstances; (b) nurses desiring enhanced ethics knowledge and skills to improve quality of care, understand different perspectives, and act as a resource for others; and (c) nurses supporting and facilitating patient-centered ethical decision making. Conclusions Findings are consistent with those appearing in the international literature but provide a more cohesive and comprehensive account than previously, and hold promise for the development of educational and policy strategies to address moral distress and uncertainty. Clinical Relevance This study is relevant to clinical practice in its verification of the need nurses have for ethics knowledge, skill refinement, and application through communication. These findings affirmed the challenge that nurses feel in communicating their ethical concerns in an effective and engaging way and their commitment to advocacy and improvement in the quality of care for patients.