Nursing priorities, actions, and regrets for ethical situations in clinical practice.

Purpose: Nurses in all clinical settings encounter ethical issues that frequently lead to moral distress. This critical incident study explored nurses' descriptions of ethically difficult situations to identify priorities, action responses, and regrets.

Methods: Employing the critical incident technique, researchers developed a questionnaire that collected information on ethically difficult situations, nurse actions, and situational outcomes.

Early indicators and risk factors for ethical issues in clinical practice.

Purpose: Nurses in all clinical settings encounter ethical issues that frequently lead to moral distress. This critical incident study explored nurses' descriptions of ethically difficult situations to identify risk factors and early indicators of ethical conflicts.

Methods: Employing the critical incident technique, researchers developed a questionnaire that collected information on ethically difficult situations, their risk factors and early indicators, nurse actions, and situational outcomes.

Expanding nurses' participation in ethics: an empirical examination of ethical activism and ethical assertiveness.

This research project investigated the extent to which nurses engage in two important kinds of ethical behaviours: ethical activism (where they try to make hospitals more receptive to nurses' participation in ethics deliberations) and ethical assertiveness (where they participate in ethics deliberations even when not formally invited). This research probed not only the extent to which nurses engage in these ethical behaviours but also whether this is influenced by professional, training and organizational factors. A random sample of 165 nurses from three major hospitals in Los Angeles provided the data.