Articles: pandemics.
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Frontline health-care workers experienced moral injury long before COVID-19, but the pandemic highlighted how pervasive and damaging this psychological harm can be. Moral injury occurs when individuals violate or witness violations of deeply held values and beliefs. We argue that a continuum exists between moral distress, moral injury, and burnout. Distinguishing these experiences highlights opportunities for intervention and moral repair, and may thwart progression to burnout.
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Preventive medicine · Nov 2022
Pre-pandemic social isolation as a predictor of the adverse impact of the pandemic on self-rated health: A longitudinal COVID-19 study in Japan.
Many studies have found adverse effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic on health. Irrespective of being infected by the coronavirus, lockdowns and other measures to restrict mobility have worsened an individual's subjective health assessment. Unlike previous studies, this study examined how pre-pandemic social isolation (in the form of no interaction with others and having no social support) affected the impact of the pandemic on self-rated health in Japan. ⋯ The state of emergency raised the probability of reporting poor health by 17.8 (95% confidence interval [CI]:1.9-33.8) percentage points among the participants who had not interacted with others before the pandemic, compared with only 0.7 (95% CI: -3.1-4.5) percentage points among other participants. Similar results were obtained in the absence of social support prior to the pandemic. In conclusion, pre-pandemic social isolation was detrimental to health, suggesting that policy measures are needed to avoid social isolation to increase the resilience of public health to external shocks.
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Southern medical journal · Nov 2022
Participation in a Longitudinal Seminar Series Increases Medical Student Engagement with the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic required a multifaceted response by healthcare professionals. Medical students played only a limited role in the early response, resulting in feelings of disengagement. The authors developed a discussion-based elective course reviewing the COVID-19 response to address this gap in medical student education. ⋯ Preclinical medical student participation in a discussion-based seminar course reviewing the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased feelings of engagement with and understanding of the response of the medical field to the pandemic.