Moral Distress in Pediatric Healthcare Providers 1

• Moral distress in all pediatric professionals correlates with intent to leave one's position.
• Physicians report greater moral distress than nurse or other professionals.
• For nurses those working in intensive care have higher moral distress.
• The most distressing situations include requests for aggressive treatments not in child's best interest, poor team communication and lack of provider continuity.

Pediatric providers across professions and clinical settings experience moral distress. Higher moral distress correlates with intent to leave for all professionals. Physicians as professional group had the highest moral distress. Intensive care nurses had the highest moral distress for nurses. While all providers describe distressing scenarios as disturbing, physicians report situations as occurring more frequently. The most distressing situations include requests for aggressive treatments not in child's best interest, poor team communication and lack of provider continuity. Understanding moral distress as experienced by all pediatric providers is needed to create interventions with a goal of reducing provider turnover.