The following is a summary of “Critical Care Nurses’ Moral Resilience, Moral Injury, Institutional Betrayal, and Traumatic Stress After COVID-19,” published in the March 2024 issue of Critical Care by Weissinger et al.
A gap exists in understanding how traumatic stress, moral injury, and institutional betrayal influence burnout and moral resilience, highlighting the need for research into these risk and protective factors.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to assess critical care nurses’ experiences of traumatic stress, moral injury, moral resilience, and institutional betrayal, investigating how moral injury and traumatic stress symptoms relate to these factors and patient-related burnout.
They conducted a cross-sectional study involving 121 critical care nurses and utilized an online survey. They assessed critical variables using validated instruments. They examined relationships among variables using descriptive statistics, regression analyses, and group t-tests.
The results showed that 71.5% of the participating nurses experienced notable symptoms of moral injury and/or traumatic stress. Burnout was linked to both moral injury symptoms and traumatic stress. Regression analyses revealed that institutional betrayal heightened the chances of experiencing traumatic stress and moral injury. Additionally, greater scores on the Response to Moral Adversity subscale of moral resilience were linked to a decreased likelihood of encountering traumatic stress and moral injury symptoms.
Investigators concluded that resilience helps, but systemic issues (e.g., institutional betrayal) must be addressed to truly support critical care nurses.
