Jessica is an OB-GYN at a Pennsylvania hospital.

For her, being a doctor is a higher calling, but she says it's getting harder and harder

to live up to that calling as her employer turns her hospital into a lean for-profit corporation.

Our patients expect us to be and we want to be compassionate caregivers who think of

them and their disease and what we can do to help and nothing else.

The reality is we're partly that and partly data entry workers and partly complicit

in a medical system that is focused on profit rather than the patient.

Not just frustrated or dismayed, but partly complicit.

Jessica feels like she herself is a guilty party as the quality of care goes down.

That's taking a toll on her sense of worth, her moral compass on the Hippocratic oath she

took when she became a doctor and that toll, that sense of helplessness, has a name,

moral injury.

What comes with it that's more moral injury is, am I being honest with myself and my patients

when I say, what we're doing is safe, it's good enough.

I'm giving patients the care they need.

I'm taking care of patients the way I would want to take care of my family and my loved

ones.

Would I send someone to the place that I'm taking care of them?

Do I have the resources to do this job well?

And if I don't, what can I do about that?

And it's horrifying to realize the answer is maybe nothing.

To be clear, Jessica isn't talking about burnout, but moral injury.

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