Health Care Blog August 30, 2024
When Andrew Jameton, a Nursing Professor at the Department of Mental Health and Community Nursing at UCSF in 1984 published “Nursing Practice: The Ethical Issues”, the term “Moral Distress” was a novel term in clinical health care. It focused primarily on “care that they were expected to provide but ethically opposed.”
Over the past four decades, the definition has expanded and now encompasses the “inability to provide the care that one feels morally compelled to provide.” Beyond its’ impact on individual health professionals, it has growing health policy implications, explosively reverberating in the wake of the recent Dobbs decision.
There are approximately 1600 health care facilities nationwide that provide abortion care in the U.S. In the wake of the Dobbs...