Background and Objective: Nurses encounter many moral stresses during their professional career. Moral knowledge can be helpful in their moral decisions. This study aimed to discuss the effect of moral distress in nursing ethics.

Materials and Methods: This experimental study consisted of a sample of 30 nurses from all civil hospitals in 2014 which was selected randomly and assigned to two groups of experimental and control. After 4 sessions (one session a week for 90 minutes for a month) nursing ethics were presented to the experimental group. In order to measure the dependent variable (moral distress), the post-test questionnaires of moral sensitivity were distributed to the both groups. The data was analyzed using SPSS V.20 software.

Results: After the intervention there was a significant decrease in mean of moral distress in the experimental group. This means that there was a reduction in ethical distress following the implementation of moral principles training in nursing education.

Conclusions: Ethical principles training can be considered as a factor to increase awareness of ethics in nurses and underlie the reduction of their ethical distress. So implementing ethics training programs in health centers as a way to reduce ethical distress among nurses should be considered.