Ed – We have previously covered the concept of moral injury on the blog and podcast, largely in respect to the experience of managing patients with traumatic injury. In 2020 the concept has been used to describe some of the experiences clinicians are experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Esther Murray is a well recognised expert in the field of moral injury in relation to healthcare and we are therefore delighted to bring you this video featuring her that explains why this such an important concept to understand at this time. What I especially like in the video is that it does not simply describe moral injury but also talks about how it can be recognised in colleagues, how we might prevent it and what can be done when it occurs. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. Over to you Esther……
I was invited by colleagues from the London Transformation and Learning Collaborative (LTLC) to make some short videos on moral injury and the other psychosocial impacts of COVID-19. They wanted to make educational resources which would stimulate reflection, start conversations about moral injury and feel less like a tick box exercise. Now that moral injury is something we’re talking about more and more, and, as Shay describes, the failures in leadership at the highest levels (i.e. regionally and nationally) in high stakes situations are occurring on a daily basis, we wanted to create a resource that addressed the real life consequences of the current situation.
We chose this interview format so that staff could ask questions about moral injury amongst other things, and we could have real conversations. Personally, I wanted to get across the idea that although most of us will recover from all of this, none of us will be unchanged by it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, and realising that we have the ability to get through really hard situations is important. It isn’t fair or appropriate to behave as if someone, somewhere has the key to being able to cope with this pandemic – actually healthcare professionals and AHPs are humans who have all these strengths already, of course.