Two in three UK doctors suffer ‘moral distress’ due to overstretched NHS, study finds

Denis Campbell

The Guardian

Originally posted 28 Dec 23

Two in three UK doctors are suffering “moral distress” caused by the enfeebled state of the NHS and the damage the cost of living crisis is inflicting on patients’ health, research has found.

Large numbers are ending up psychologically damaged by feeling they cannot give patients the best possible care because of problems they cannot overcome, such as long waits for treatment or lack of drugs or the fact that poverty or bad housing is making them ill.

A new survey found that 65% of doctors overall, including nearly four in five (78%) GPs and more than half (56%) of hospital doctors, have experienced “moral distress” as a direct result of situations they have encountered working in the NHS.

Seeing patients with malnutrition or hypothermia, or stuck on trolleys in A&E corridors asking for help or forced to choose between heating their home or getting a prescription dispensed are among the events triggering their distress, medics said.

“There’s barely a doctor at work in the NHS today who doesn’t see or experience this distress on a daily basis,” said Prof Philip Banfield, the leader of the British Medical Association.

The NHS is “impossibly overstretched”, has thousands of vacancies for doctors and has a quarter fewer doctors a head of population than Germany, he added.

“In practice that means we can almost never give the standard of care we would want, only ever the care we can manage. That takes its toll, as we see here,” Banfield said.

The info is here.

Key points:

The study also found that:

• Nearly half (47%) of doctors believe the cost of living crisis is contributing to their moral distress.
• 72% of doctors say being unhappy at work has affected their mental health.
• 85% of doctors have experienced fatigue as a result of their work.

Causes of moral distress:

• Doctors are often in situations where they have to make difficult decisions about who to treat first, or whether they can afford to give a patient the treatment they need.
• They may also feel that they are not able to provide the level of care that they would like to because of the lack of resources in the NHS.

Impact of moral distress:

• Moral distress can lead to burnout, depression, and anxiety.
• It can also make it difficult for doctors to continue working in the NHS.

Abuse Survivors ‘Disgusted’ by Southern Baptist Court Brief

Bob Smietana

Christianity Today

Originally published 26 OCT 23

Here is an excerpt:

Members of the Executive Committee, including Oklahoma pastor Mike Keahbone, expressed dismay at the brief, saying he and other members of the committee were blindsided by it. Keahbone, a member of a task force implementing abuse reforms in the SBC, said the brief undermined survivors such as Thigpen, Woodson, and Lively, who have supported the reforms.

“We’ve had survivors that have been faithful to give us a chance,” he told Religion News Service in a phone interview. “And we hurt them badly.”

The controversy over the amicus brief is the latest crisis for leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has dealt with a revolving door of leaders and rising legal costs in the aftermath of a sexual abuse crisis in recent years.

The denomination passed abuse reforms in 2022 but has been slow to implement them, relying mostly on a volunteer task force charged with convincing the SBC’s 47,000 congregations and a host of state and national entities to put those reforms into practice. Those delays have led survivors to be skeptical that things would actually change.

Earlier this week, ­the Louisville Courier Journal reported that lawyers for the Executive Committee, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—the denomination’s flagship seminary in Louisville—and Lifeway had filed the amicus brief earlier this year in a case brought by abuse survivor Samantha Killary.

The information is here.

Here is my summary: 

In October 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) filed an amicus curiae brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court arguing that a new law extending the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims should not apply retroactively. This filing sparked outrage among abuse survivors and some SBC leaders, who accused the denomination of prioritizing its own legal interests over the needs of victims.

The SBC's brief was filed in response to a lawsuit filed by a woman who was sexually abused as a child by a Louisville police officer. The woman is seeking to sue the city of Louisville and the police department, arguing that they should be held liable for her abuse because they failed to protect her.

The SBC's brief argues that the new statute of limitations should not apply retroactively because it would create a "windfall" for abuse survivors who would not have been able to sue under the previous law. The brief also argues that applying the new law retroactively would be unfair to institutions like the SBC, which could be faced with a flood of lawsuits.

Abuse survivors and some SBC leaders have criticized the brief as being insensitive to the needs of victims. They argue that the SBC is more interested in protecting itself from lawsuits than in ensuring that victims of abuse are able to seek justice.

In a joint statement, three abuse survivors said they were "sickened and saddened to be burned yet again by the actions of the SBC against survivors." They accused the SBC of "proactively choosing to side against a survivor and with an abuser and the institution that enabled his abuse."

Moral injury in post-9/11 combat-experienced military veterans: A qualitative thematic analysis.

Kalmbach, K. C., Basinger, E. D.,  et al. (2023). 

Psychological Services. Advance online publication.

https://doi.org/10.1037/ser0000792

Abstract

War zone exposure is associated with enduring negative mental health effects and poorer responses to treatment, in part because this type of trauma can entail crises of conscience or moral injury. Although a great deal of attention has been paid to posttraumatic stress disorder and fear-based physiological aspects of trauma and suffering, comparatively less attention has been given to the morally injurious dimension of trauma. Robust themes of moral injury were identified in interviews with 26 post-9/11 military veterans. Thematic analysis identified 12 themes that were subsumed under four categories reflecting changes, shifts, or ruptures in worldview, meaning making, identity, and relationships. Moral injury is a unique and challenging clinical construct with impacts on the individual as well as at every level of the social ecological system. Recommendations are offered for addressing moral injury in a military population; implications for community public health are noted.

Impact Statement

Military veterans who experienced moral injury—events that violate deeply held moral convictions or beliefs—reported fundamental changes following the morally injurious event (MIE). The MIE ruptured their worldview, or sense of right and wrong, and they struggled to reconcile a prior belief system or identity with their existence post-MIE. Absent a specific evidence-based intervention, clinicians are encouraged to consider adaptations to existing treatment models but to be aware that moral injury often does not respond to treatment as usual for PTSD or adjacent comorbid conditions.

The article is paywalled, with the link noted above.

My addition:

The thematic analysis identified 12 themes related to moral injury, which were grouped into four categories:

• Changes in worldview: Veterans who experienced moral injury often reported changes in their worldview, such as questioning their beliefs about the world, their place in it, and their own goodness.
• Changes in meaning making: Veterans who experienced moral injury often struggled to make meaning of their experiences, which could lead to feelings of emptiness, despair, and hopelessness.
• Changes in identity: Veterans who experienced moral injury often reported changes in their identity, such as feeling like they were no longer the same person they were before the war.
• Changes in relationships: Veterans who experienced moral injury often reported changes in their relationships with family, friends, and others. They may have felt isolated, misunderstood, or ashamed of their experiences.

Their own worst enemy? Collective narcissists are willing to conspire against their in-group

M. Biddleston, A. Cichocka, et al.

The British Journal of Psychology

First published: 06 May 2022

Abstract

Collective narcissism – a belief in in-group greatness that is not appreciated by others – is associated with using one's group for personal benefits. Across one pilot and four studies, we demonstrated that collective narcissism predicts readiness to conspire against in-group members (rmeta-analysis = .24). In Study 1, conducted in Poland (N = 361), collective narcissism measured in the context of national identity predicted readiness to engage in secret surveillance against one's own country's citizens. In Study 2 (N = 174; pre-registered), collective narcissism in UK workplace teams predicted intentions to engage in conspiracies against co-workers. In Study 3 (N = 471; pre-registered), US national narcissism predicted intentions to conspire against fellow citizens. Furthermore, conspiracy intentions accounted for the relationship between collective narcissism and beliefs in conspiracy theories about the in-group. Finally, in Study 4 (N = 1064; pre-registered), we corroborated the link between Polish national narcissism and conspiracy intentions against fellow citizens, further showing that these intentions were only directed towards group members that were perceived as moderately or strongly typical of the national in-group (but not when perceived in-group typicality was low). In-group identification was either negatively related (Studies 1 and 2) or unrelated (Studies 3 and 4) to conspiracy intentions (rmeta-analysis = .04). We discuss implications for research on conspiracy theories and populism.

Practitioner points

• Analysts should monitor cases of public endorsement of collective narcissism, which is a belief that one’s in-group (e.g. nation, organisation, or political party) is exceptional but underappreciated by others.
• As we show, collective narcissism is associated with a willingness to conspire against fellow in-group members and with support for in-group surveillance policies.
• Thus, groups cherishing such a defensive form of in-group identity are threatened from the inside, thereby warranting education aimed at identifying and avoiding potential exploitation from otherwise trusted members within their own groups.

From the General Discussion

Collective narcissism compensates for frustrated needs (Cichocka et al., 2018; Golec de Zavala et al., 2019). Thus, for those scoring high in collective narcissism, it is the group that serves the individual, rather than the individual who serves the group (Cichocka, 2016). As those scoring high in collective narcissism are more firmly invested in the in-group, they should be more likely to try to satisfy their needs via taking advantage of the group. This implies that those high in collective narcissism might be ready to sacrifice in-group members and collude against them, if this helps them further their agendas (see Douglas & Sutton, 2011). These conspiratorial efforts seem directed towards in-group members perceived as typical of the in-group. Our findings add to the growing literature showing that collective narcissism does not only predict hostile outgroup attitudes, but that it is also linked to problematic relations within the in-group (Cichocka et al., 2021; Cichocka & Cislak, 2020; Gronfeldt et al., 2022; Marchlewska et al., 2020).

The research is here.

On Top of Everything Else, the Pandemic Messed With Our Morals

Jonathan Moens

The Atlantic

Originally posted 8 June 21

Here is an excerpt:

The core features of moral injury are feelings of betrayal by colleagues, leaders, and institutions who forced people into moral quandaries, says Suzanne Shale, a medical ethicist. As a way to minimize exposure for the entire team, Kathleen Turner and other ICU nurses have had to take on multiple roles: cleaning rooms, conducting blood tests, running neurological exams, and standing in for families who can’t keep patients company. Juggling all those tasks has left Turner feeling abandoned and expendable. “It definitely exposes and highlights the power dynamics within health care of who gets to say ‘No, I'm too high risk; I can't go in that patient's room,’” she said. Kate Dupuis, a clinical neuropsychiatrist and researcher at Canada’s Sheridan College, also felt her moral foundations shaken after Ontario’s decision to shut down schools for in-person learning at the start of the pandemic. The closures have left her worrying about the potential mental-health consequences this will have on her children.

For some people dealing with moral injury right now, the future might hold what is known as “post-traumatic growth,” whereby people’s sense of purpose is reinforced during adverse events, says Victoria Williamson, a researcher who studies moral injury at Oxford University and King’s College London. Last spring, Ahmed Ali, an imam in Brooklyn, New York, felt his moral code violated when dead bodies that were sent to him to perform religious rituals were improperly handled and had blood spilling from detached IV tubes. The experience has invigorated his dedication to helping others in the name of God. “That was a spiritual feeling,” he said.

But moral injury may leave other people feeling befuddled and searching for some way to make sense of a very bad year. If moral injury is left unaddressed, Greenberg said, there’s a real risk that people will develop depression, alcohol misuse, and suicidality. People suffering from moral injury risk retreating into isolation, engaging in self-destructive behaviors, and disconnecting from their friends and family. In the U.K., moral injury among military veterans has been linked to a loss of faith in organized religion. The psychological cost of a traumatic event is largely determined by what happens afterward, meaning that a lack of support from family, friends, and experts who can help people process these events—now that some of us are clawing our way out of the pandemic—could have serious mental-health repercussions. “This phase that we’re in now is actually the phase that’s the most important,” Greenberg said.

The article is here.

The Moral Inversion of the Republican Party

Peter Wehner

The Atlantic

Originally posted 4 Feb 20

Here are two excerpts:

So how did the Republican Party end up in this dark place?

It’s complex, but surely part of the explanation rests with the base of the party, which today is composed of a significant number of people who are militant, inflamed, and tribalistic. They are populist, anti-institutional, and filled with grievances. They very nearly view politics as the war of all against all. And in far too many cases, they have entered a world of make-believe. That doesn’t describe the whole of the Republican Party’s grassroots movement, of course, but it describes a disturbingly large portion of it, and Republicans who hope to rebuild the party will get nowhere unless and until they acknowledge this. (Why the base has become radicalized is itself a tangled story.)

The base’s movement toward extremism preceded Trump, and inevitably complicated life for Republican lawmakers; they were understandably wary of speaking out in ways that would alienate their supporters, that would catalyze a primary challenge and might well cost them a general election. But that fear and reticence in the age of Trump—a man willing to cross any line, violate any standard, dehumanize any opponent—produced a catastrophe. In some significant respects, the GOP is a party that has been morally inverted.

(cut)

Republicans can’t erase the past four years; with rare exceptions they were, to varying degrees, complicit in the Trump legacy—the lies, the lawlessness, the brutality of our politics, the wounds to our country. But there is the opportunity for Republicans in a post-Trump era to forge a different path, one that again places morality at the center of politics. Republicans can choose to live within the truth rather than within the lie, to stand for simple decency, to play a role in building a state that is reasonably humane and just. This starts with its political leadership, which needs to break some terribly bad habits, including thinking one thing and saying another. It starts with the courage to confront the maliciousness in its ranks rather than cater to it.

I don’t know if Republicans are up to the task right now, and I certainly understand those who doubt it. But there are plenty of people willing to help them try.

The info is here.

Beyond burnout: For health care workers, this surge of Covid-19 is bringing burnover

Wendy Dean & Simon G. Talbot

statnews.com

Originally posted 25 Nov 20

Covid-19 is roaring back for a third wave. The first two substantially increased feelings of moral injury and burnout among health care workers. This one is bringing burnover.

Health care systems are scrambling anew. The crises of ICU beds at capacity, shortages of personal protective equipment, emergency rooms turning away ambulances, and staff shortages are happening this time not in isolated hot spots but in almost every state. Clinicians again face work that is risky, heart-rending, physically exhausting, and demoralizing, all the elements of burnout. They have seen this before and are intensely frustrated it is happening again.

Too many of them are leaving health care long before retirement. The disconnect between what health care workers know and how the public is behaving, driven by relentless disinformation, is unbearable. Paraphrasing a colleague, “How can they call us essential and then treat us like we are disposable?”

It is time for leaders of hospitals and health care systems to add another, deeper layer of support for their staff by speaking out publicly and collectively in defense of science, safety, and public health, even if it risks estranging patients and politicians.

Long before the pandemic emerged, the relationships between health care organizations and their staffs were already strained by years of cost-cutting that trimmed staffing levels, supplies, and space to the bone. Driven by changes in health care reimbursement structures, systems were “optimized” to the point that they were continually running at what felt like full capacity, with precious little slack to accommodate minor surges, much less one the magnitude of a global pandemic.

The info is here.

We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying.

Umair Haque
eand.co
Originally poste 29 Aug 20

Right about now, something terrible is happening in America. Society is one tiny step away from the final collapse of democracy, at the hands of a true authoritarian, and his fanatics. Meanwhile, America’s silent majority is still slumbering at the depth and gravity of the threat.

I know that strikes many of you as somehow wrong. So let me challenge you for a moment. How much experience do you really have with authoritarianism? Any? If you’re a “real” American, you have precisely none.

Take it from us survivors and scholars of authoritarianism. This is exactly how it happens. The situation could not — could not — be any worse. The odds are now very much against American democracy surviving.

If you don’t believe me, ask a friend. I invite everyone who’s lived under authoritarianism to comment. Those of us how have?

We survivors of authoritarianism have a terrible, terrible foreboding, because we are experiencing something we should never do: deja vu. Our parents fled from collapsing societies to America. And here, now, in a grim and eerie repeat of history, we see the scenes of our childhoods played out all over again. Only now, in the land that we came to. We see the stories our parents recounted to us happening before our eyes, only this time, in the place they brought us to, to escape from all those horrors, abuses, and depredations.

(cut)

There is a crucial lesson there. America already has an ISIS, a Taliban, an SS waiting to be born. A group of young men willing to do violence at the drop of a hat, because they’ve been brainwashed into hating. The demagogue has blamed hated minorities and advocates of democracy and peace for those young men’s stunted life chances, and they believe him. That’s exactly what an ISIS is, what a Taliban is, what an SS is. The only thing left to do by an authoritarian is to formalize it.

But when radicalized young men are killing people they have been taught to hate by demagogues right in the open, on the streets — a society has reached the beginnings of sectarian violence, the kind familiar in the Islamic world, and is at the end of democracy’s road.

The info is here.

Reframing Clinician Distress: Moral Injury Not Burnout

W. Dean, S. Talbot, and A. Dean
Fed Pract. 2019 Sep; 36(9): 400–402.

For more than a decade, the term burnout has been used to describe clinician distress. Although some clinicians in federal health care systems may be protected from some of the drivers of burnout, other federal practitioners suffer from rule-driven health care practices and distant, top-down administration. The demand for health care is expanding, driven by the aging of the US population. Massive information technology investments, which promised efficiency for health care providers, have instead delivered a triple blow: They have diverted capital resources that might have been used to hire additional caregivers, diverted the time and attention of those already engaged in patient care, and done little to improve patient outcomes. Reimbursements are falling, and the only way for health systems to maintain their revenue is to increase the number of patients each clinician sees per day. As the resources of time and attention shrink, and as spending continues with no improvement in patient outcomes, clinician distress is on the rise. It will be important to understand exactly what the drivers of the problem are for federal clinicians so that solutions can be appropriately targeted. The first step in addressing the epidemic of physician distress is using the most accurate terminology to describe it.

Freudenberger defined burnout in 1975 as a constellation of symptoms—malaise, fatigue, frustration, cynicism, and inefficacy—that arise from “making excessive demands on energy, strength, or resources” in the workplace. The term was borrowed from other fields and applied to health care in the hopes of readily transferring the solutions that had worked in other industries to address a growing crisis among physicians. Unfortunately, the crisis in health care has proven resistant to solutions that have worked elsewhere, and many clinicians have resisted being characterized as burned out, citing a subtle, elusive disconnect between what they have experienced and what burnout encapsulates.

In July 2018, the conversation about clinician distress shifted with an article we wrote in STAT that described the moral injury of health care. The concept of moral injury was first described in service members who returned from the Vietnam War with symptoms that loosely fit a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but which did not respond to standard PTSD treatment and contained symptoms outside the PTSD constellation. On closer assessment, what these service members were experiencing had a different driver. Whereas those with PTSD experienced a real and imminent threat to their mortality and had come back deeply concerned for their individual, physical safety, those with this different presentation experienced repeated insults to their morality and had returned questioning whether they were still, at their core, moral beings. They had been forced, in some way, to act contrary to what their beliefs dictated was right by killing civilians on orders from their superiors, for example. This was a different category of psychological injury that required different treatment.

The article is here.

COVID-19 Is Making Moral Injury to Physicians Much Worse

Wendy Dean
Medscape.com
Originally published 1 April 20

Here is an excerpt:

Moral injury is also coming to the forefront as physicians consider rationing scarce resources with too little guidance. Which surgeries truly justify use of increasingly scarce PPE? A cardiac valve replacement? A lumpectomy? Repairing a torn ligament?

Each denial has profound impact on both the patients whose surgeries are delayed and the clinicians who decide their fates. Yet worse decisions may await clinicians. If, for example, New York City needs an additional 30,000 ventilators but receives only 500, physicians will be responsible for deciding which 29,500 patients will not be ventilated, virtually assuring their demise.

How will physicians make those decisions? How will they cope? The situation of finite resources will force an immediate pivot to assessing patients according to not only their individual needs but also to society's need for that patient's contribution. It will be a wrenching restructuring.

Here are the essential principles for mitigating the impact of moral injury in the context of COVID-19. (They are the same as recommendations in the time before COVID-19.)

1. Value physicians

a. Physicians are putting everything on the line. They're walking into a wildfire of a pandemic, wearing pajamas, with a peashooter in their holster. That takes a monumental amount of courage and deserves profound respect.

The info is here.

Burr moves to quell fallout from stock sales with request for Ethics probe

Jack Brewster
politico.com
Originally posted 20 March 20

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Friday asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review stock sales he made weeks before the markets began to tank in response to the coronavirus pandemic — a move designed to limit the fallout from an intensifying political crisis.

Burr, who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, defended the sales, saying he “relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks" and disputed the notion he used information that he was privy to during classified briefings on the novel coronavirus. Burr specifically name-checked CNBC’s daily health and science reporting from its Asia bureau.

“Understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight however, I spoke this morning with the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and asked him to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency,” Burr said in a statement.

Burr, who is retiring at the end of 2022, has faced calls to resign from across the ideological spectrum since ProPublica reported Thursday that he dumped between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 different transactions — a week before the stock market began plummeting amid fears of the coronavirus spreading in the U.S.

The info is here.

Moral Judgment Toward Relationship Betrayals and Those Who Commit Them

Dylan Selterman Amy Moors Sena Koleva
PsyArXiv
Created on January 18, 2019

Abstract

In three experimental studies (total N = 1,056), we examined moral judgments toward relationship betrayals, and how these judgments depended on whether characters and their actions were perceived to be pure and loyal compared to the level of harm caused. In Studies 1 and 2 the focus was confessing a betrayal, while in Study 3 the focus was on the act of sexual infidelity. Perceptions of harm/care were inconsistently and less strongly associated with moral judgment toward the behavior or the character, relative to perceptions of purity and loyalty, which emerged as key predictors of moral judgment across all studies. Our findings demonstrate that a diversity of cognitive factors play a key role in moral perception of relationship betrayals.

Here is part of the Discussion:

Some researchers have argued that perception of a harmed victim is the cognitive prototype by which people conceptualize immoral behavior (Gray et al.,2014).This perspective explains many phenomena within moral psychology.  However, other psychological templates may apply regarding sexual and relational behavior, and that purity and loyalty play a key role in explaining how people arrive at moral judgments toward sexual and relational violations. In conclusion, the current research adds to ongoing and fruitful research regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms involved in moral judgment. Importantly, the current studies extend our knowledge of moral judgments into the context of specific close relationship and sexual contexts that many people experience.

The research is here.

Atlanta child psychologist admits to molesting girl, posting it online

Ben Brasch and Kristal Dixon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Originally posted February 15, 2019

A metro Atlanta psychologist who spent years counseling children will spend two decades in prison after violating the trust of those around him and molesting a pre-teen girl.

In a muffled voice, Jonathan Gersh, 38, admitted in a Cobb County court Friday that he took lewd pictures of the girl, which he put online and were viewed around the world.

Prosecutors said he also took cell phone pictures of children in bathing suits in public and offered to trade photos online. “These pictures are not baseball cards to be traded,” said Judge Steven Schuster.

Gersh’s charges included child molestation and child pornography, but Schuster said “I have a duty to the victim, the victim’s family and society to stop any form of what I perceive to be sex trafficking.”

Defense attorney Richard Grossman had asked the judge for five years in prison. Prosecutors asked for 18 years. Grossman said described his client’s actions as compulsive “voyeurism” and said Gersh “led an exemplary life” as a loving father who offered pro bono counseling to the community.

The info is here.

What is moral injury in veterans?

Holly Arrow and William Schumacher
The Conversation
Originally posted May 21, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The moral conflict created by the violations of “what’s right” generates moral injury when the inability to reconcile wartime actions with a personal moral code creates lasting psychological consequences.

Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, in his work with Vietnam veterans, defined moral injury as the psychological, social and physiological results of a betrayal of “what’s right” by an authority in a high-stakes situation. In “Achilles In Vietnam,” a book that examines the psychological devastation of war, a Vietnam veteran described a situation in which his commanding officers used tear gas on a village after the veteran and his unit had their gas masks rendered ineffective due to water damage. The veteran stated, “They gassed us almost to death.” This type of “friendly fire” incident is morally wounding in a way that attacks by an enemy are not.

Psychologist Brett Litz and his colleagues expanded this to include self-betrayal and identified “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” as the cause of moral injury.

Guilt and moral injury

A research study published in 1991 identified combat-related guilt as the best predictor of suicide attempts among a sample of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. Details of the veterans’ experiences connected that guilt to morally injurious events.

The article is here.

Steps to Strengthen Ethics in Organizations: Research Findings, Ethics Placebos, and What Works

By Ken Pope
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
Volume 16, Issue 2, 2015

Abstract

Research shows that many organizations overlook needs and opportunities to strengthen ethics. Barriers can make it hard to see the need for stronger ethics and even harder to take effective action. These barriers include the organization’s misleading use of language, misuse of an ethics code, culture of silence, strategies of justification, institutional betrayal, and ethical fallacies. Ethics placebos tend to take the place of steps to see, solve, and prevent problems. This article reviews relevant research and specific steps that create change.

The entire article is here.

The Ethics of Whistle-Blowing

Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly
Originally published February 14, 2014

Is Edward Snowden a hero for revealing government wrongdoing, or a traitor for leaking classified information? “I don’t think anybody acts and says to themselves, ‘What I’m doing is immoral, but I’m going to do it.’ People always rationalize,” according to former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Correspondent Lucky Severson reports on the debate over the morality of Snowden’s actions.



The entire story is here.

Great Betrayals

By ANNA FELS
The New York Times - Opinion
Published: October 5, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Discoveries of such secrets typically bring on tumultuous crises. Ironically, however, in my clinical experience, it is often the person who lied or cheated who has the easier time. People who transgressed might feel self-loathing, regret or shame. But they have the possibility of change going forward, and their sense of their own narrative, problematic though it may be, is intact. They knew all along what they were doing and made their own decisions. They may have made bad choices, but at least those were their own and under their control. Now they can make new, better choices.

And to an astonishing extent, the social blowback for such miscreants is often transient and relatively minor. They can change! Our culture, in fact, wholeheartedly supports such “new beginnings” — even celebrates them. It has a soft spot for the prodigal sons and daughters who set about repairing their ways, for tales of people starting over: reformed addicts, unfaithful spouses who rededicate themselves to family, convicted felons who find redemption in religion. Talk shows thrive on these tales. Perhaps it’s part of our powerful national belief in self-help and self-creation. It’s never too late to start anew.

The entire story is here.