Hi, I'm Henry Bear.

And I'm Tyler Johnson.

And you're listening to The Doctors Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.

Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered.

What makes medicine meaningful?

Can a stronger understanding of this meaning

create better doctors?

How can we build health care institutions

that nurture the doctor-patient connection.

What can we learn about the human condition

from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?

In seeking answers to these questions,

we meet with deep thinkers working across health care, from doctors and nurses to patients and health care executives, those who have collected a career's worth of hard-earned wisdom.

Probing the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heart-breaking, amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.

We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.

Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions. First used in the context of Vietnam War veterans, the term moral injury refers to the

psychosocial, behavioral, and spiritual distress that comes from perpetuating or witnessing events that

contradict deeply held moral beliefs.

In recent years, moral injury has increasingly been used to describe one of the main challenges clinicians face in modern medicine,

the challenge of knowing what care patients need, but at the same time being unable to provide it due to constraints beyond the clinician's control,

such as limited time or misaligned financial structures.

Even more than emotional exhaustion and attachment, moral injury leads to profound shame and guilt.

...