Abstract:
In this article, we focus on a particular kind of emotional impact of the pandemic, namely the phenomenology of the experience of moral injury in healthcare professionals. Drawing on Weber\'s reflections in his lecture Politics as a Vocation and data from the Experiences of Social Distancing during the COVID-19 Pandemic Survey, we analyse responses from healthcare professionals which show the experiences of burnout, sense of frustration and impotence, and how these affect clinicians\' emotional state. We argue that this may relate to the ethical conflicts they experience when they are forced to make clinical decisions where there are no optimal outcomes, and how in turn that impacts on their own emotional state. We then further examine the notion of \'burnout\' and the phenomenology of \'moral injury\'. Our argument is that these experiences of moral injury across a range of clinicians during the pandemic may be more prevalent and long-standing in psychiatry and mental health than in other areas of healthcare, where ethically difficult decisions and resource constraints are common outside times of crisis. Hence, in these clinical arenas, moral injury and the phenomenology of emotional changes may be independent of the pandemic. The insights gained during the pandemic may provide wider insights into the challenges of developing services and training the workforce to provide appropriate mental health care.
摘要:
在这篇文章中,我们关注大流行对情绪的一种特殊影响,即医疗保健专业人员道德伤害经历的现象学。借鉴韦伯在他的演讲中的思考,政治是一种职业,以及来自COVID-19大流行调查中社会距离经历的数据,我们分析了医疗保健专业人员的反应,这些反应显示了职业倦怠的经历,沮丧和阳痿的感觉,以及这些如何影响临床医生的情绪状态。我们认为,这可能与他们在被迫做出没有最佳结果的临床决策时所经历的道德冲突有关,以及这反过来如何影响他们自己的情绪状态。然后,我们进一步研究了“倦怠”的概念和“道德伤害”的现象学。我们的论点是,在大流行期间,一系列临床医生的道德伤害经历可能在精神病学和精神健康领域比在其他医疗保健领域更普遍和长期存在,在危机时期之外,道德上困难的决策和资源限制是常见的。因此,在这些临床领域,道德伤害和情绪变化的现象学可能与大流行无关。在大流行期间获得的见解可能会对发展服务和培训劳动力以提供适当的精神保健的挑战提供更广泛的见解。