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Workforce & wellbeing
Validating a moral distress scale for paramedics
Cultural Adaptation, Validity, and Reliability of the Moral Distress Scale for Prehospital Emergency Health Services Employees: The Case of Türkiye
Journal of Religion and Health · 2026-10-14 · Added 16 October 2026
Turkish researchers validated a Turkish-language Moral Distress Scale in 215 prehospital emergency clinicians, confirming a five-factor, 20-item structure with high internal consistency (α = 0.90).
- Study type
- Cross-sectional
- Design
- Cross-sectional psychometric validation (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis)
- Participants
- 215 prehospital emergency healthcare professionals
- Main finding
- Five-factor 20-item structure confirmed with acceptable fit (RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.89) and high internal consistency (α = 0.90)
- Caveat
- Single-country cultural adaptation with no test of responsiveness over time or in other systems
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). The instrument is Turkish, but moral distress from rapid decisions with limited resources is a universal feature of ambulance work and this adds to the small pool of prehospital-specific measures.
Learning goal
Understand how moral distress presents in prehospital practice and how it shapes clinician wellbeing and retention.
More
- Topic: Workforce & wellbeing
- Daily scan: 16 October 2026
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