Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Denial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denial. Show all posts

Friday, May 27, 2022

What to Do If Your Job Compromises Your Morals

R. Carucci and L. N. Praslova
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted 29 APR 22

Here are two excerpts:

The emerging scholarship on reconciling the various terms used to describe responses to moral events points toward a continuum of moral harm. Of course, the complexity and variety of moral situations make any classification imperfect. Situations involving committing moral transgressions are more likely to lead to shame and guilt, while being a victim of betrayal is more likely to result in anger or sadness. In addition, there are also individual differences in sensitivity to morally distressing events, which can be determined by both biology and experience. Nevertheless, here is a useful summary:

  • Moral challenges are isolated incidents of relatively low-stakes transgressions. For example, workers might be instructed to use lower-quality materials in creating a product (e.g., substituting a non-organic product when running out of organic). A manager may require an employee to stay late, as a rare exception. This may result in a somewhat distressing but transitory “moral frustration,” with moderate levels of anger or guilt.
  • Moral stressors can lead to more significant moral distress. This may involve more substantial and/or regular moral transgressions — for example, a manager pushing employees to stay late several times every month, or an HR professional administering a morale survey knowing that the results will never be used, just like all the previous surveys. A dental practice may upsell patients on unnecessary, but not harmful treatments. This may result in negative moral emotions that are bothersome and might be lasting, but do not interfere with daily functioning. (However, in some nursing research, the experience referred to as “moral distress” is seen as very intense, possibly meeting the criteria for moral injury).
  • Injurious events are the most egregious. Executives could pressure a manager into manipulating burned-out employees to regularly sacrifice their time off and well being, while the organization intentionally keeps positions open for months. A health care worker might be required to provide medical treatments that are likely to lead to more treatments even though a cure is available. Situations like these could result in a highly distressing moral injury in which negative moral emotions are sufficiently intense and frequent to interfere with daily functioning. In particular, a person may experience intense shame leading to self-isolation or self-harm, or may quit their job in disgust. This level of moral stress response is similar to and at least partially overlaps with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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Moral injuries can leave lasting impacts on our psyche, but they don’t have to remain debilitating. Like other trauma and hurt, we can grow from them. We can find the resilience we need to rise above the injury and restore our moral centers. Sometimes we’re able to take the environments along on that journey, and sometimes we have to leave them. Either way, if you’re carrying the weight of moral injury, don’t wait until it overtakes your whole outlook on life, and yourself. Find the courage to face what you’ve experienced and done, and with it, reclaim the values you hold most dear.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Donald Trump: a political determinant of covid-19

Gavin Yamey and Greg Gonsalves
BMJ 2020; 369  (Published 24 April 2020)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1643

He downplayed the risk and delayed action, costing countless avertable deaths

On 23 January 2020, the World Health Organization told all governments to get ready for the transmission of a novel coronavirus in their countries. “Be prepared,” it said, “for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread.” Some countries listened. South Korea, for example, acted swiftly to contain its covid-19 epidemic. But US President Donald Trump was unmoved by WHO’s warning, downplaying the threat and calling criticisms of his failure to act “a new hoax.”

Trump’s anaemic response led the US to become the current epicentre of the global covid-19 pandemic, with almost one third of the world’s cases and a still rising number of new daily cases.4 In our interconnected world, the uncontrolled US epidemic has become an obstacle to tackling the global pandemic. Yet the US crisis was an avertable catastrophe.

Dismissing prescient advice on pandemic preparedness from the outgoing administration of the former president, Barack Obama, the Trump administration went on to weaken the nation’s pandemic response capabilities in multiple ways. In May 2018, it eliminated the White House global health security office that Obama established after the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic to foster cross-agency pandemic preparedness. In late 2019, it ended a global early warning programme, PREDICT, that identified viruses with pandemic potential. There were also cuts to critical programmes at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part and parcel of Trump’s repeated rejections of evidence based policy making for public health.

Denial
After the US confirmed its first case of covid-19 on 22 January 2020, Trump responded with false reassurances, delayed federal action, and the denigration of science. From January to mid-March, he denied that the US faced a serious epidemic risk, comparing the threat to seasonal influenza. He repeatedly reassured Americans that they had nothing to worry about, telling the public: “We think it's going to have a very good ending for us” (30 January), “We have it very much under control in this country” (23 February),
and “The virus will not have a chance against us. No nation is more prepared, or more resilient, than the United States” (11 March).

The info is here.

Monday, October 31, 2016

A Plan To Defend Against the War on Science

By Shawn Otto
Scientific American
Originally published October 9, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In the years since, the situation has gotten worse. We’ve seen the emergence of a “post-fact” politics, which has normalized the denial of scientific evidence that conflicts with the political, religious or economic agendas of authority. Much of this denial centers, now somewhat predictably, around climate change—but not all. If there is a single factor to consider as a barometer that evokes all others in this election, it is the candidates’ attitudes toward science.

Consider, for example, what has been occurring in Congress. Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, is a climate change denier. Smith has used his post to initiate a series of McCarthy-style witch-hunts, issuing subpoenas and demanding private correspondence and testimony from scientists, civil servants, government science agencies, attorneys general and nonprofit organizations whose work shows that global warming is happening, humans are causing it and that—surprise—energy companies sought to sow doubt about this fact.

The article is here.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

How celebrity child sex scandal has rocked the BBC

By Simon Hooper
Special to CNN
Originally published October 22, 2012


In life he was one of Britain's best loved children's television personalities, an icon of the pop music world, flamboyant friend of the famous, renowned for his eccentricities and honored for his tireless charity work.

But in death, Jimmy Savile now stands accused of being a pedophile who used his status and celebrity to prey on young girls throughout decades in the public spotlight, his gravestone already removed amid an outpouring of public revulsion. Prime Minister David Cameron has even suggested the removal of Savile's knighthood might be considered in light of the allegations.

As presenter of "Jim'll Fix It," the BBC's flagship Saturday teatime kids' show from the mid-70s until the mid-90s, Savile cultivated an image as the nation's kindly uncle who could make children's dreams come true with a twirl of his trademark cigar.

Yet an ITV documentary -- "Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile" -- broadcast in early October portrayed the late star as a nightmarish figure whose sexual predilection for teenagers was known about, laughed off or suspected by many within the entertainment industry but never openly challenged.

The entire story is here.