Development and Testing of an Instrument to Measure Moral Distress in Healthcare Professionals

Although moral distress is increasingly recognized as an important problem that threatens the integrity of health care providers and health care systems, few reliable and valid measures of moral distress are currently in use in research or clinical practice. This article describes the development and testing of a revised measure of moral distress, the Moral Distress Scale–Revised (MDS-R), designed for use in multiple health care settings and with multiple disciplines.

After instrument development and content validity testing, a survey methodology was used to assess reliability and construct validity of the MDS-R. Registered nurses (n = 169) and physicians (n = 37) in eight intensive care units (ICUs) at an academic medical center in the southeastern United States participated; the survey was administered during a 2-week period in January 2011.