For more than a decade, the term burnout, which suggests a lack of resilience, has been used to describe distress among medical clinicians. The concept of moral injury more accurately locates the source of an ongoing and increasing crisis in a conflict-ridden healthcare system.
In If I Betray These Words, Moral Injury In Medicine And Why It’s So Hard For Clinicians To Put Patients First, Wendy Dean, M.D. explores and exposes the impacts of moral injury through vividly told stores that are at once bewildering and eye-opening. Her book serves as a roadmap through a healthcare landscape that can be confounding, and at times even hellish, for those who must navigate it, and it suggests alternative routes for healers and their patients.
Moral injury occurs when a person perpetrates, bease witness to, or fails to prevent an act that transgresses their deeply held moral beliefs. The deeply held moral belief that physicians share is the oath they take when completing their lengthy training and embarking on their career: put the needs of patients first.
Copyright 2023 by Wendy Dean, 291 pages