The story
The term was first used in clinical nursing literature in the 1980s and first formally described by Andrew Jameton in 1984.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
moral distress
Today it means: A form of emotional or psychological distress that occurs when a person knows the ethically appropriate action to take but is prevented from acting due to external constraints, such as policy restrictions or an insufficiently powerful role. Full definition →