How is Moral Distress Different than Burnout or Compassion Fatigue?
We have been hearing/reading a lot lately about "burnout": a condition brought on by occupational stress, whose symptoms include feeling increasingly distant about one's job. Similarly, "compassion fatigue," which results from being involved with or seeing too much distress, also leads to emotional withdrawal.
But the opposite situation prevails in situations of "moral distress": painful feelings that occur when a person recognizes that something is wrong but unfixable. Currently, medical personnel, especially nurses, are feeling intense, painful, moral distress because, with COVID, they are unable to fulfill their mission of caring effectively for their patients.
Causes of Moral Distress for Nurses
There are two causes. First, there are inadequate resources for them to do their jobs properly. Early in the pandemic, there was inadequate PPE (Person Protective Equipment) and other supplies. Now, with the current spike in cases, there are insufficient people. Many hospitals are severely understaffed, and their nurses have too many patients to care for. One nurse described the anguish she feels when two patients need her at the same time. To whose bed does she run? (And which patient, therefore, gets neglected?)
Second, there are not adequate effective treatments for COVID. As a result, many patients die. Nurses are distressed because they feel helpless to provide the care that would enable their patients to recover. A nurse described seeing those of her patients who survive being discharged home with a tracheostomy and a feeding tube, in a semi-vegetative state.
Many nurses are resigning, explaining that they can't bear to feel any more pain.
How my Emotional Comfort® Tool Can Help
First, it provides intervals of peacefulness and calm. Secondly, using Step 3, you can wish for a new mental pathway that will be dedicated to blocking the discomfort of whatever moral distress you are feeling. This doesn't mean that you don't care. It means that the mental pathway containing those feelings is sequestered so that, feeling free of that distress, you are better able to do the best you can for your patients. And yourself!
How can you create a new mental pathway simply by wishing for it? The theoretical explanation is described in my course Achieving Emotional Comfort®, but you don't need to know the theory in order for this to work for you.
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