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giving voice To
inTuiTion in oveRcoming
moRal disTRess
LYNN PASQUERELLA
Mount Holyoke College
CAROLINE S. CLAUSSEHLERS
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
10.1 Introduction
e term “moral distress” was coined in 1984 by philosopher Andy
Jameton (1984, 1992, 1993) within the context of nursing ethics. Moral
distress refers to situations in which institutional and organizational
cultures coerce individuals into acting in ways that go against their ethi-
cal principles. Within the literature, the concept of moral distress has
been conceptualized as the situation individuals face when they make
“moral judgments about the right course of action to take in a situa-
tion, and they are unable to carry it out” (McCarthy and Deady, 2008,
p.