Moral Injury on the Front Lines: Lessons From Healthcare | Alina Bennett | TEDxOshkosh

How do we make meaning out of suffering? This task has occupied human minds for millennia. Moral injury offers a new way to understand the consequences of betrayal resulting in the destruction of personhood.
This talk assesses how the complexities of contemporary medical work, the rise of a patients-as-consumers orientation, and the lack of health literacy in the United States has created environments where moral injury can flourish among health workers and what treatment is needed to recover.
Her nerd-heart drove her to attend university for entirely too long, resulting in a Master of Arts in Women’s Studies, a Master of Public Health, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in the Medical Humanities, all with mental health among incarcerated people as her research focus.
As she was completing her studies in the Texas, she met and married a practically perfect woman who smokes the best Texas-style BBQ beef ribs. They live in Oakland, California where she helps people to think well about the moral dimensions of medicine. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@FarahDeshmukh1]

SO happy to see you give this talk, Alina! Miss you! :)

[@jessicabruhn3645]

Alina Bennett = a person who is an expert in her field and should be hired regularly to educate large workforces in healthcare and other environments where moral injury is ignored, gaslit and minimized.

[@celieboo]

This video needs way more views.

[@Ravengal101]

Summary: A moral injury is caused by an authority figure betraying "what's right" in a high-stakes situation. We can help the morally-injured by listening ethically.

[@brainfreshtoday]

So interesting- thank you for helping me understand this concept!!

[@susanbrown7185]

Excellent

[@eb4677]

Intelligent people able transform. Thats why people in any society must be taught from childhood such stories to become intelligent!

[@nathanhuber4838]

Another way to phrase what the speaker is discussing is the idea of virtue ethics, and the tribulations you can experience when the virtues you work so hard to uphold are shattered before you. For those who don’t know, virtue ethics is person, rather than action based. It looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out the action, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of a particular action. A “right” act is the action a virtuous person would do in similar circumstances as another. So, when someone’s whole existence revolves around those virtues and they are violated it can result in what the speaker is calling moral injury, which is a new term to me. I have previously heard this referred to as an ethical dilemma. A dilemma is exactly what was described in the video with the nurse getting irrationally angry out of the car of her window because her moral judgement was challenged, similarly the example used of doctors leaving in troves due to the ethical dilemmas they were facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, further emphasizes this point. Here is a link if you want to learn more about these ethical principles: What is Virtue Ethics? (Philosophical Definition) - KZbin Thank you for sparking such an interesting discussion!