Surveying Association Between Moral Injury and Quality of Work Life of Emergency Nurses During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The emergency department is an environment with a high volume of workload pressure and stressors accompanied by various moral problems and challenges. Thus, the current research examined the association between moral injury and the quality of work life of the nurses.

Methods: In this descriptive-correlational study done in 2022, 168 nurses working in the emergency department of the referral hospitals of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences participated via census sampling. The demographic questionnaire, moral injury questionnaire (Moral Injury Symptom Scale-Healthcare Professionals version), and Brooks' Quality of Nursing Work Life scale were used to collect the data, which were analyzed by SPSS 25 and used descriptive and inferential statistics with Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests.

Results: The mean moral injury and the mean quality of nursing work life resulted as 9.58 ± 46.69 and 129.92 ± 15.76, respectively. Moral injury displayed a significant and indirect relationship with the quality of nursing work life (r = -0.433, P<0.05). In addition, moral injury was meaningfully associated with age, work record, work shift, job rank, and the number of patients (P = .05). The quality of work life was also significantly associated with gender, education, and marital status (P<.05).

Discussion: In the current study, a significant relationship was discovered between moral injury and the quality of work life of nurses during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. As moral injury increases, the nurses' quality of work life decreases.

Keywords: COVID-19; Emergency department; Moral injury; Nurses; Quality of work life.