Moral distress is a negative emotional response that occurs when physicians know the morally correct action but are prevented from taking it because of internal or external constraints. Moral distress undermines a physician’s ethical integrity, leading to anger, poor job satisfaction, reduced quality of care and burnout. Scarce literature exists on the ethical aspects of moral distress in medicine. We conducted an ethical analysis of moral distress as experienced by physicians and analysed it from the literature using two predominant ethical theories: principlism and care ethics. Finally, we consider the emergence of moral distress in medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

道德困扰是一种消极的情绪反应，当医生知道道德上正确的行为但由于内部或外部限制而无法采取这种行为时，就会发生这种反应。道德困扰会破坏医生的道德诚信，导致愤怒、工作满意度低、护理质量下降和倦怠。关于医学道德困境的伦理方面的文献很少。我们对医生所经历的道德困扰进行了伦理分析，并使用两种主要的伦理理论从文献中对其进行了分析：原则主义和护理伦理。最后，我们考虑在 COVID-19 大流行期间医学中出现的道德困境。