Organizational Justice as a Mediator Between Moral Distress and Emotional Exhaustion Among Nurses
Afsaneh Parvin, Ali Mohammad Parviniannasab, Ali Taghinezhad, Mostafa BijaniIntroduction
Corley’s model posits that individual and organizational factors, particularly organizational justice, play an important role in the development of moral distress and its consequences for nurses’ well-being.
Objective
Guided by this theoretical framework, this study aimed to examine whether organizational justice mediates the relationship between moral distress and emotional exhaustion among nurses.
Methods
A multicenter, cross-sectional survey was conducted among 521 nurses employed at three medical universities in Fars Province, southern Iran. Data were collected using validated instruments, including the Moral Distress Scale–Revised (MDS-R), the Emotional Exhaustion Questionnaire, and the Organizational Justice Questionnaire. Mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes’s PROCESS macro (Model 4) in SPSS, version 27.
Results
Moral distress was significantly and negatively associated with organizational justice (β = −0.74,
Conclusion
The findings provide empirical support for the relevance of Corley’s model to the relationship between moral distress and emotional exhaustion. Although Corley conceptualized organizational factors as important antecedents and contextual determinants of moral distress and its consequences, the present findings further indicate that organizational justice may function as a mechanism linking moral distress with emotional exhaustion.