Moral Distress and Job Satisfaction among Nurses Working in Tertiary Care Hospitals, Karachi, Pakistan

Moral distress is a painful feeling and a mental disturbance that occurs when a morally correct course of action is known but cannot be performed. Objective: To determine the moral distress and job satisfaction level, their correlation and their association with demographics among nurses working in public sector tertiary care hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. Methods: This study was conducted in public sector tertiary care hospitals in Karachi through an analytical cross-sectional study design among 300 nurses. Results: This study shows that 52.7% of the participants had low, 38% have moderate, while 9.3% have high/very high levels of moral distress. Most of the nurses, 94%, were satisfied with their job. Moral distress was negatively correlated with job satisfaction (r=-0.180, p=0.002). Moreover, moral distress was associated with age (p=0.03) and ward (p= <0.001). In contrast, job satisfaction was associated only with gender (p=0.008). Conclusions: The study findings illustrated that most nurses had low moral distress and were satisfied. Moral distress was negatively correlated with job satisfaction.