Community Health Care Contexts

Abstract

Moral distress also occurs outside the walls of hospitals, despite persistent beliefs that significant ethical issues must have strict acute care boundaries. However, in community health care settings care providers often have far less control over circumstances and environments. A well-stocked supply cupboard is far from the reach of a visiting nurse who drives, sometimes long distances, to see patients post-operatively for dressing changes and at end-of-life for palliative care. Also explored will be community settings such as public health, primary care clinics, academia, remote First Nation communities, correctional settings, and residential care. These are different stories of moral distress experiences than one might hear in acute care settings, but they retain common ground. Long term and residential care settings appear to be leaders of moral distress research and exploration. This chapter will explore contributions to our understanding of the concept of moral distress from recent academic literature and studies conducted in community care settings.