Moral Courage and the Nurse Leader

Today’s nurse leaders practice in very complex environments. This complexity leads to value conflicts and creates the potential for moral distress. Jameton’s sentinel work framed the concept of moral distress as arising when one knows the morally right thing to do, but cannot do so because of organizational constraints. In this article the author reviews sources of moral distress among nurse leaders, discusses the nurse leader’s responsibility for demonstrating and supporting moral courage, identifies threats to moral courage among nurse leaders, offers strategies to promote moral courage, and makes recommendations for the continuing development of moral courage.