This week we recorded a podcast inspired by a recent publication in the EMJ. Esther Murray aka @EM_Healthpsych is a psychologist working in London.

Her recent paper on whether the experiences of medical students might precipitate moral injury during their pre-hospital experiences gives  an insight into how we all cope with and respond to the clinical work we do. Some of the work we do is traumatic, painful and morally difficult to rationalise. We are witness to the very worst aspects of some of our patient’s lives and there may be a price to pay.

I was delighted to explore some of the concepts around moral injury in this podcast and would really recommend that you read the paper 1 and consider whether this is something that can affect ourselves and our colleagues. The paper is open access at the moment so there is no excuse not to 😉

Although the paper is based on a small number of participants from only one aspect of the healthcare system it does recognise this limitation and alludes to future work with different groups of clinician.

Esther describes ‘moral injury’ as a concept emerging from work with military veterans. It is used to describe the psychological sequelae of ‘bearing witness to the aftermath of violence and human carnage