Addressing the Issues of Moral Injuries in Healthcare

Issue of Moral Injury in Health Care
The following is based on an article in Scientific American (Elizabeth Svoboda on September 19, 2022) titled Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions: A specific kind of trauma results when a person’s core principles are violated during wartime or a pandemic
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Credit: Ashley Mackenzie
In early 2021 emergency room physician Torree McGowan hoped the worst of the pandemic was behind her. Then the virus’s Delta variant hit with exponential fury, and the delicate balance McGowan had maintained came crashing down. Suddenly, COVID patients were streaming into the ERs at the hospitals where she worked, and she had to tell many patients she was powerless to help them because the few drugs she had didn’t work in late stages of the disease. “That feels really terrible,” McGowan says. “That’s not what any of us signed up for.”
It wasn’t just COVID patients McGowan couldn’t help. It was also everyone else. People still approached a health-care emergency with the expectation that they were going to be taken care of right away but during the surge, there were no beds. “And I don’t have a helicopter that can fly you between my hospital and the next hospital,” she says, “because they’re all full.” A patient with suspected colon cancer showed up bleeding in the ER, and McGowan’s inner impulses screamed that she needed to admit the woman immediately for testing. But because there were no beds left, she had to send the patient home instead. The need to abandon her own standards and watch people suffer and die was hard enough for McGowan. Just as disorienting, though, was the sense that more and more patients no longer cared what happened to her or anyone else. She had assumed she and her patients played by the same basic rules—that she would try her utmost to help them get better and that they would support her or at least treat her humanely. If you kill someone, and you feel totally justified in having done so, you may not experience moral injury at all. Moral injury tends to turn up when you have a vision of the world as fundamentally fair and good and something you’ve done or witnessed destroys that vision. People who’d experienced moral injury consistently had a higher risk of suicide than control participants.
Psychiatrist Wendy Dean sees moral injury in health care often doesn’t stem from one-time, cataclysmic events. Many providers are suffering what she calls “death by a thousand cuts”—the constant, stultifying knowledge that they have to give people subpar care or none at all. Yet many organizations are taking the easy way out, Dean says. Instead of launching systemic reforms that could help head off moral injury, they’re offering “wellness solutions” such as massages and meditation tips, which can amount to putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone.
The Question:
Basing your ideas on concepts from this course, what systemic reforms might you suggest that could help avoid moral injury to health care professionals? Format: Formulate your answer under the following sections in the order specified. To ensure brevity, only indicate the sections by number not the words below. Simply, put 1., 2., 3…7. to represent the headings below. (Note: Lectures 9 and 10 are to be combined as one heading). 1.Doctor-patient communications/Breaking bad news/Developing compassion in medicine (Lecture 9/10).2.Risk perception and risk communication (Lecture 11)3.Dealing with the impact of traumatic events in medicine (Lecture 12).4.Psychological issues in advancing and terminal illness (Chapter 12)5.Heart disease, hypertension, stroke and diabetes (Chapter 13)6.Psychoneuroimmunology, AIDS, cancer, and arthritis (Chapter 14)7.Health psychology: Challenges for the future (Chapter 15)•Papers must not exceed 1200 words. Grader will stop reading at 1200 words.•Be precise and concise. You will be graded on the clarity and depth of your rationales. (Note: repetitionof the same concept with the same rationale will not earn credit). Brief concise examples/applicationsmay be used to make your points more explicit.•Write in compete sentences NOT bullet points•Single space•There is no need for an introductory or summary/conclusion paragraphs as these tend be repetitive.
•Any sources other than the course textbook and lectures must be properly referenced using AmericanPsychological Association (APA) style. For APA citation guidance go to Purdue’s OWL site belowgo to OWL
https://owl(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html