Mental Health News Releases and Coverage Trauma

Hard choices put health workers at risk of mental anguish, PTSD during coronavirus (SPH)

Nurses collect samples from a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver on April 21, 2020. (Photo credit: The Conversation CA)

Initial reports from the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic suggested that health-care workers were at high risk for moral injury.

Moral injury, often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is thought of in two ways. It can involve witnessing or being involved in events that violate deep moral beliefs. Or, it can involve a deep sense of betrayal when a organization fails to protect its people.

As clinicians and scientists studying PTSD, we expected that health-care workers and administrators facing COVID-19 might be forced to choose between “wrong” and “wronger.” For example, having to decide who does or does not receive access to the last remaining ventilator on the intensive care unit.

Click here to read the full story on The Conversation CA.

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