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Podcast: The Podcast by KevinMD
Episode: Understanding the ethical injury of moral distress in clinicians
Description: Licensed clinical psychologist and health care ethicist Jenny Shields discusses her article, "DSM-5 doesn’t name it, but moral distress is everywhere in medicine." Jenny illuminates the pervasive issue of moral distress among clinicians, defining it as the psychological toll exacted when they know the ethically appropriate action but are systematically prevented from taking it by institutional constraints such as hospital policies or insurer mandates. She carefully distinguishes moral distress from burnout or trauma, characterizing it as a chronic erosion of professional identity that occurs when daily work consistently conflicts with the core values that drew clinicians to their pr...