This paper proposes communities of practice (CoP) as a process to build moral resilience in healthcare settings. We introduce the starting point of moral distress that arises from ethical challenges when actions of the healthcare professional are constrained. We examine how situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic can exponentially increase moral distress in healthcare professionals. Then, we explore how moral resilience can help cope with moral distress. We propose the term collective moral resilience to capture the shared capacity arising from mutual engagement and dialogue in group settings, towards responding to individual moral distress and towards building an ethical practice environment. Finally, we look at CoPs in healthcare and explore how these group experiences can be used to build collective moral resilience.
contrary to studies of other sectors, younger age and shorter tenure were not universal risk factors for occupational injuries in the female dominated healthcare sector. Young and new workers had increased risk of cuts and punctures, but a decreased risk of musculoskeletal injuries.
Analysis from British Columbia's healthcare sector suggests variation in workers' compensation acceptance exists across sub-sectors, occupations, seniority of workers, and injury categories. The patterns observed, however, were independent of age and sex of workers. Results suggest that when using workers' compensation datasets, local adjudication regulations and factors associated with acceptance of claims should be taken into consideration.
This paper addresses the role that communities of practice (CoP) can have within the healthcare environment when facing uncertainty and highly emotionally impactful situations, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The starting point is the recognition that CoPs can contribute to build resilience among their members, and particularly moral resilience. Among others, this is due to the fact that they share a reflective space from which shared knowledge is generated, which can be a source of strength and trust within the healthcare team. Specifically, in extreme situations, the CoPs can contribute to coping with moral distress, which will be crucially important not only to facing crisis situations, but to prevent the long-term adverse consequences of working in conditions of great uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how CoP can support healthcare professionals when building moral resilience. To support that goal, we will first define CoP and describe the main characteristics of communities of practice in healthcare. Subsequently, we will clarify the concept of moral resilience, and establish the relationship between CoP and moral resilience in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we analyze different group experiences that we can consider as CoP which emerged in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to navigate moral problems that arose.
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