Moral distress: Feeling compelled to do the wrong thing

Abstract

Moral distress is a conceptual tool that brings the emotional landscape of the moral realm to the fore and draws attention to the socio-political and contextual features of moral agency. This essay gives a brief history of the development of the normative and empirical research on moral distress. It pays special attention to the standard definition of moral distress originally delineated by Andrew Jameton in 1984 and the early empirical research that operationalized this definition. Finally, it summarizes some of the lenses through which moral distress is currently perceived, articulated, and critiqued.