Psychiatrist and trainee moral injury during the organisational long COVID of Australian acute psychiatric inpatient services 2022 Looi et al

[As best I can tell from the abstract, they are not using "long COVID" in the sense of the syndrome.]

Abstract

Objective
This paper provides a commentary on the risk of moral injury amongst psychiatrists and trainees working in the acute psychiatric hospital sector, during the third winter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions
Moral injuries arise from observing, causing or failing to prevent adverse outcomes that transgress core ethical and moral values. Potentially, morally injurious events (PMIEs) are more prevalent and potent while demand on acute hospitals is heightened with the emergence of highly infectious SARS-CoV-2-Omicron subvariants (BA.4 and BA.5). Acute hospital inpatient services were already facing extraordinary stresses in the context of increasingly depleted infrastructure and staffing related to the pandemic. These stresses have a high potential to be morally injurious. It is essential to immediately fund additional staff and resources and address workplace health and safety, to seek to arrest a spiral of moral injury and burnout amongst psychiatrists and trainees. We discuss recommended support strategies.

Paywall, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10398562221142448

 

Scientific American 2022 article: Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions quotes a King's Centre for Military Health Research* 2018 study Occupational moral injury and mental health: systematic review and meta-analysis for which the full text is available on SciHub: https://sci-hub.se/10.1192/bjp.2018.55

These studies highlight that the other side of the healthcare equation has structural problems that impact the very people patients rely on, something that does need to be taken account of in patient advocacy, even if it seems unfair that we have to take that on board.

* King's Centre for Military Health Research has Simon Wessely as one of its directors.