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COVID‐19 as moral breakdown: Entangled ethical demands experienced by hospital‐based nurses in the early onset of the pandemic
Author(s) -
Mejdahl Caroline Trillingsgaard,
Nielsen Berit Kjærside,
Mehlsen Mimi Yung,
Hollesen Maj Rafn,
Pedersen Mathilde Zilén,
EngkjærTrautwein Georgij,
Funch Louise Vase,
Terkildsen Morten Deleuran
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
nursing inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.66
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1800
pISSN - 1320-7881
DOI - 10.1111/nin.12508
Subject(s) - pandemic , ethical issues , covid-19 , nursing , psychology , health care , medicine , engineering ethics , political science , disease , law , infectious disease (medical specialty) , engineering , pathology
Abstract 2020 saw the rapid onset of a global pandemic caused by the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus. For healthcare systems worldwide, the pandemic called upon quick organization ensuring treatment and containment measures for the new virus disease. Nurses were seen as constituting a vital instrumental professional component in this study. Due to the pandemic's unpredictable and potentially dangerous nature, nurses have faced unprecedented risks and challenges. Based on interviews and free text comment from a survey, this study explores how ethical challenges related to “being a nurse” during the COVID‐19 pandemic was experienced and understood by Danish hospital‐based nurses. Departing from anthropologist Jarett Zigon's notion of moral breakdown, the study demonstrates how the rapid onset of the pandemic constitutes a moral breakdown raising ethical demands for nurses. Analytically we identify three different ethical demands experienced by the nurses. These ethical demands are Nursing and societal ethical demands, Nursing and personal ethical demands , and Nursing and conflicting ethical demands . These demands represent not only very different understandings of ethical demands but also different understandings of ethical acts that are seen as necessary to respond to these demands.