Moral Injury in Complex Adaptive Human Systems
Dinner parties can be fertile ground for conversation and connection. Last night amidst the friendly banter of a lively dinner party I listened carefully to an emergency health care provider discuss the highs and lows of his career. He talked about feelings of love, intimacy, honor, frustration, and betrayal that accompany the care of patients within health bureaucracies. At one point in the conversation I mentioned to him that an event he was describing sounded like a moral injury had occurred. He was not familiar with the term ‘moral injury’ and so we discussed the meaning. I first learned the term ‘moral injury’ when listening to an episode of Fresh Air broadcast on NPR in 2014. During the broadcast Terry Gross interviewed military correspondent, David Wood, who said, “I think that almost everyone who returns from war has suffered some kind of moral injury…….and I do not mean by that that they have done something wrong, only that they have seen or expe...