The trauma that the country feels in the aftermath of these all-too-common mass shootings is palpable, raw and not quickly relieved. And imagine what the medical staffs of the hospitals experienced as victims of these attacks are rushed into their facilities.

And another kind of trauma continues to afflict them: COVID infection numbers are climbing again. For people who have been vaccinated, there is a tendency to think of the pandemic in the past tense. But for front-line health care workers, it is not at all a thing of the past.

Even before hospitals faced the challenges of COVID 19, there were challenges that many health care professionals were unable or unwilling to overcome. In January of this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that healthcare was among the top three professions in monthly "quits rate." That month alone, 33,000 health care workers quit their jobs, leaving hospitals, and the remaining workers, scrambling.

On today’s installment of Midday on Ethics, we’re going to talk about moral resilience and why it is such an important component for the people our healthcare is entrusted to. And we'll tell you about The Nurse Antigone Project, a collaborative arts project spotlighting the unique challenges front-line nurses have endured during the COVID pandemic.

Tom's guests today are two scholars from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is the director of the Berman Institute, and our regular guest here on Midday for our Midday on Ethics programs.

Dr. Jeffrey Kahn join us on Zoom from Baltimore.

Dr. Cynda Rushton is the Anne and George L. Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Institute, and a Professor of Nursing and Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She is the creator of the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale, and the editor and author of Moral Resilience: Transforming Moral Suffering in Healthcare.

Dr. Cynda Rushton joins us on Zoom from Boston.

The next performance of The Nurse Antigone takes place tonight (Wednesday, May 25), originating in New York City, from 5-7pm. To register for the free Zoom event, click here.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.