Background: Nursing turnover rates are among the highest measured in recent years, contributing to financial and staffing challenges in the healthcare industry. Citing ethical challenges and subsequent moral distress, nurses have increasingly turned to travel nurse positions to continue their practice. Current literature regarding moral distress and ethical challenges has largely focused on staff nurses, and it is unknown how travel nurses experience ethical challenges and any associated moral distress. Methods: Qualitative Descriptive Study with a purposive sampling strategy. Results: Fifteen Interviews were completed with a sample of 12 women and 3 men, and a range of travel nurse experience between 1 and 13 years. Three categories emerged from the data to describe participant experiences with ethical challenges: “Varied Experiences Enhance Moral Agency,” “Calculating Acceptance Versus Advocacy,” and “Knowing Oneself and Crafting a Community.” Each category has 3 subthemes which highlights how their unique experiences affected their ethical awareness, professional attitudes and judgments, and community building.
Discussion: The contributions of this study will not only inform the practice models of travel nursing, which is predicted to continue to grow in the coming years but may help in developing strategies to support all nurses encountering ethical challenges in their practice. This study will provide data needed for future intervention studies that have important implications for the health and well-being of nurses and patients. Understanding how travel nurses experience and mitigate ethical challenges will help identify successful strategies that may be applied more broadly.