Long-term care and other providers must consider implementing interventions for healthcare workers, say researchers who found the COVID-19 pandemic caused employees significant moral and emotional challenges.
“The constant need to make decisions at difficult times and in difficult circumstances has created a rift within healthcare professionals, leading to a loss of personal identity and uncertainty regarding their performance in the healthcare setting,” a Spanish research team wrote in a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice.
The investigators sought to gauge the moral impact of the pandemic on healthcare professionals by exploring their experiences. The study was conducted between February and March 2021 through in-depth interviews of healthcare staff that worked during the start of the pandemic and in their same sectors during the time of the study.
Participants’ experiences caused by the pandemic centered around four themes: betrayal of moral and ethical values, ethical and moral sense of failure, lack of confidence in their performance and feelings of guilt.
One participant reported losing confidence in their abilities after. They added “ … seeing so many people die every day made you doubt your work. It’s as if nothing you do has any effect, and that makes you lose confidence.”
Investigators said feelings of guilt among healthcare workers flourished as the pandemic worsened around them. They stressed the importance of providers implementing self-compassion programs to aid professionals during difficult situations.
“Interventions must be put in place to prevent and redress moral harm to health professionals as a result of ethical conflicts, arising in day-to-day care and in possible future pandemics,” they concluded.
