To identify the difficulties encountered by nursing staff delivering palliative care to inpatients, and to assess the intensity of their stress of conscience during the provision of this care. In this cross-sectional, descriptive investigation, 143 nurses delivering palliative care in the intensive care and oncology departments of a university hospital were enrolled. Data collection instruments comprised the Nurses Descriptive Characteristics Form, the Palliative Care Difficulties Scale, and the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire. Data analysis was executed utilizing arithmetic means, Cronbach’s alpha, Independent Samples t-tests, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Mann-Whitney U tests, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and Spearman’s rank correlation. The subjects’ average age was 31.26 ± 6.88 years. Regarding the conceptual definition of conscience, 25.9% of the cohort equated it with “compassion”, whereas 21.0% characterized it as “empathy”. Mean scores recorded from the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire and the Palliative Care Difficulties Scale were 86.8 ± 48.7 and 42.6 ± 8.3, respectively. No statistically significant correlation was observed between the global scores of the Palliative Care Difficulties Scale and the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (P > 0.05). Conversely, statistically significant relationships were identified between the participants’ Palliative Care Difficulties Scale scores and variables including sex and clinical department (P ≤ 0.05). The findings indicate that nurses engaged in palliative care require targeted support, and that female sex, alongside postgraduate education, exerts a favorable influence on conscience. These results suggest that undergraduate and graduate nursing curricula should place greater emphasis on ethical dilemmas in palliative care. Nurses delivering palliative care in oncology and intensive care settings routinely confront diverse ethical dilemmas and experience moral distress while striving to maintain effective communication with patients and ensure continuity of care. Bolstering support for these professionals through national and international policy frameworks will enhance the overall quality of patient care.
