Objective: To examine the relationship between moral injury and surgical practice, further explore the concept of protective equity, and understand its role in mitigating the impact of morally injurious events throughout a surgical career.
Background: Moral injury in healthcare settings has evolved from Jonathan Shay's original definition, modified by Brett Litz and others, to encompass the psychological impact of adverse patient outcomes on medical practitioners. Early career surgeons may be particularly susceptible to moral injury, yet the factors influencing this vulnerability remain poorly understood.
Methods: An analysis of existing literature on moral injury in healthcare, combined with an examination of surgical career trajectories and outcome reporting was conducted. The concepts of protective equity and vulnerability are introduced, defined, and theoretically extrapolated across a surgical career.
Results: Evidence suggests that surgical complications significantly contribute to moral injury, particularly among early career surgeons. We propose a model wherein protective equity accumulates over a surgical career, whereas vulnerability follows an M-shaped curve with peaks in early and late career.
Conclusions: Early career surgeons face a precarious imbalance of low protective equity and high vulnerability, especially immediately post-training. Strategies to address this dynamic include providing: specific education when onboarding faculty, and longitudinal peer support by senior, trained surgeons.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/SLA.0000000000006607 | DOI Listing |
Neurosci Biobehav Rev
December 2024
Department of Psychology, University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Fear learning processes are believed to play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of anxiety and stress-related disorders. To integrate results across different studies, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis following PRISMA guidelines to examine differences in fear conditioning during fear acquisition, extinction, and extinction recall between individuals with anxiety-related or stress-related disorders and healthy participants. This analysis updates the work of Duits et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedicine (Baltimore)
December 2024
Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Rationale: Cardiac arrest (CA) is an acute emergency with high mortality and is closely associated with the risk of brain damage or systemic ischemia-reperfusion injury, post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Patient Concerns: Targeted temperature management in the intensive care unit can improve the neurological outcomes of patients who are comatose after resuscitation from CA. However, there is often a lack of specific evaluation methods for optimal target temperature settings.
J Pers Disord
December 2024
From Laboratory for the Study of Adult Development, McLean Hospital.
This study describes the 8-year course of physical and psychosocial impairment in middle-aged patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other personality disorders (OPD). This study also compares BPD subgroups (recovered vs. nonrecovered) and explores predictors of physical impairment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWorld J Psychiatry
December 2024
Department of Forensic Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China.
Psychiatric disorders and heart abnormality are closely interconnected. Previous knowledge has been well-established that psychiatric disorders can lead to increased cardiovascular morbidity and even sudden cardiac death. Conversely, whether heart abnormality contributes to psychiatric disorders remains rarely studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommun Biol
December 2024
Research Group Neurobiology of Stress Resilience, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, 80804, Munich, Germany.
Early life stress (ELS) can negatively impact health, increasing the risk of stress-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Importantly, PTSD disproportionately affects women, emphasizing the critical need to explore how sex differences influence the genetic and metabolic neurobiological pathways underlying trauma-related behaviors. This study uses the limited bedding and nesting (LBN) paradigm to model ELS and investigate its sex-specific effects on fear memory formation.
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