Association between moral distress and job satisfaction of Japanese psychiatric nurses

Moral distress of psychiatric nurses may affect their job satisfaction or quality of nursing care, thus examination of their moral distress is a significant issue for practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of moral distress and job satisfaction, and association between moral distress and job satisfaction. One hundred and thirty nurses who worked in psychiatric wards in a hospital in Japan completed the Moral Distress Scale for psychiatric nurses (MDS-P) and the Job Satisfaction scale (JS). The MDS-P consisted of subdomains such as “unethical conduct by caregivers,” “low staffing,” and “acquiescence to violations of patients’ rights” in intensity and frequency; the JS consisted of seven subcategories. An institutional review board in the researcher’s college approved this study. Results showed that the “acquiescence to violations of patients’ rights” was the highest of the subdomains of MDS-P, and the “interactions among nurses” was the highest of the subdomains of the JS. The unethical conduct by caregivers (MDS-P) score was negatively correlated with administration (JS) for intensity (r = -.40, p \u3c .001) and frequency (r = .37, p \u3c .001). Moreover “acquiescence to violations of patients’ rights (MDS-P)” was also negatively correlated with the “task requirement (JS)” score for intensity (r = -0.49, p \u3c .001) and for frequency (r = -0.50, p \u3c .001). These results suggest that reduction of moral distress increases job satisfaction particularly for administration and task requirement in nursing care

Switching of Charge-Current-Induced Spin Polarization in the Topological Insulator BiSbTeSe2

The charge-current-induced spin polarization is a key property of topological insulators for their applications in spintronics. However, topological surface states are expected to give rise to only one type of spin polarization for a given current direction, which has been a limiting factor for spin manipulations. Here we report that in devices based on the bulk-insulating topological insulator BiSbTeSe2, an unexpected switching of spin polarization was observed upon changing the chemical potential. The spin polarization expected from the topological surface states was detected in a heavily electron-doped device, whereas the opposite polarization was reproducibly observed in devices with low carrier densities. We propose that the latter type of spin polarization stems from topologically-trivial two-dimensional states with a large Rashba spin splitting, which are caused by a strong band bending at the surface of BiSbTeSe2 beneath the ferromagnetic electrode used as a spin detector. This finding paves the way for realizing the "spin transistor" operation in future topological spintronic devices.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures (paper proper) + 3 pages, 4 figures (Supplemental Material); rebuttal against recent criticisms towards topological-insulator spin-detection experiments has been substantiated; accepted for publication in PR