Abstract
Pediatric death is an unfortunate fact of life. When children, families, and healthcare providers have to experience an end-of-life situation, palliative care (PC) is a needed available resource for consult. Despite the increase in incidence of PC programs in the last 10 years there continues to be a lack of this resource. The unavailability of PC programs places pediatric healthcare providers in an uncomfortable situation that leads them into situational binds. Moral distress occurs when the healthcare provider recognizes the need for PC services but yet they are unavailable for the children, families, and pediatric healthcare providers. The purpose of the MSN project is to describe acute care pediatric healthcare provider’s experiences of moral distress when caring for terminally ill children in a hospital where no pediatric PC program is available.