Moral Distress During COVID‐19: Residents in Training Are at High Risk

Moral Distress in Hospitals During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Web-Based Survey Among 3,293 Healthcare Workers Within the German Network University Medicine

“…patients. An increased occupancy rate at the current work section, which results in less time per patient and more general workload (Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020), was shown to be another potential source of moral distress in the current sample. However, beta coefficients of all mentioned variables were lower than 0.30, implying a small predictive power of moral distress by the individual variables.…”

“…Moral distress frequently occurs among HCW in hospitals ( Fournier et al, 2007 ; Brown-Saltzman et al, 2015 ; McCarthy and Gastmans, 2015 ). During a pandemic moral distress is even increased and associated with more demanding and strenuous working conditions ( Borges et al, 2020 ; Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ), for instance, severely limited communication with patients and their relatives due to restraining orders and the fear of contagion ( Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ). Especially at the beginning of a pandemic, staff is often not thoroughly trained in infection prevention.…”

“…As such moral distress is positively associated with general distress ( Alkrisat, 2016 ) and decreased well-being ( Lamiani et al, 2017 ). Furthermore, moral distress is correlated with anxiety ( Sasso et al, 2016 ; Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ), and the development of depressive symptoms among HCW ( Sasso et al, 2016 ; Lamiani et al, 2018 ).…”

“…However, so far research on moral distress in the medical sector mostly focused on nurses ( Lamiani et al, 2017 ; Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ). Nurses often complained higher moral distress compared to physicians ( Mehlis et al, 2018 ; Pergert et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Occupational variables like contact with SARS-CoV-2 infected patients or contaminated material at work are potential sources of conflicts on protection management ( Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ). Occupancy rate displays another potential source of moral distress because an increased occupancy at the current work section results in less time per patient and more general workload ( Jacobs and Manfredi, 2020 ). During the first wave of the pandemic, some wards were highly used, while others had a reduced occupancy rate.…”