TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping the terrain of moral suffering
AU - Braxton, Joanne M.
AU - Busse, Eric M.
AU - Rushton, Cynda Hylton
N1 - Funding Information:
JB is grateful to William & Mary and The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress for a David B. Larson Fellowship in Spirituality and Health, which helped make this essay possible. Support for EB’s related MDiv fieldwork came from Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Medical School MBE Program, both with supervision from the Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency and Joy. An earlier draft of this work was presented at the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Annual meeting in Anaheim, CA, on October 21, 2018. JB presented a subsequent draft as a work in progress as Thomas G. and Nancy B. Davis Visiting Professor of Judeo-Christian Values, Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 2019. JB and CR field-tested some of these concepts in a CME training sponsored by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, May 29–31, 2019.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
PY - 2021/3/1
Y1 - 2021/3/1
N2 - This essay explores what to make of the various kinds of moral distress and moral injury increasingly discussed in multiple disciplines and fields of work. It argues for transdisciplinary cooperation and inquiry and proposes a common name “moral suffering” to embrace the diversity of morally fracturing experiences that negatively impact those in health care and other helping professions. The authors offer important insights into the phenomenological relationship between moral conscience and traumatic experience, presenting questions and offering a possible hypothesis for those who want to pursue this discussion further. The essay reviews the diversity of theories regarding moral distress and moral injury advanced by health-care researchers, military clinicians, and educators. It names questions that transdisciplinary engagement can help address, such as what do the disciplines of health humanities, psychology, and education have to teach each other about prevention of moral harm and the healing of invisible wounds?.
AB - This essay explores what to make of the various kinds of moral distress and moral injury increasingly discussed in multiple disciplines and fields of work. It argues for transdisciplinary cooperation and inquiry and proposes a common name “moral suffering” to embrace the diversity of morally fracturing experiences that negatively impact those in health care and other helping professions. The authors offer important insights into the phenomenological relationship between moral conscience and traumatic experience, presenting questions and offering a possible hypothesis for those who want to pursue this discussion further. The essay reviews the diversity of theories regarding moral distress and moral injury advanced by health-care researchers, military clinicians, and educators. It names questions that transdisciplinary engagement can help address, such as what do the disciplines of health humanities, psychology, and education have to teach each other about prevention of moral harm and the healing of invisible wounds?.
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U2 - 10.1353/pbm.2021.0020
DO - 10.1353/pbm.2021.0020
M3 - Article
C2 - 33994394
AN - SCOPUS:85106590501
SN - 0031-5982
VL - 64
SP - 235
EP - 245
JO - Perspectives in biology and medicine
JF - Perspectives in biology and medicine
IS - 2
ER -